BANGALORE: Kadur Assembly segment in Chikmagalur district is getting ready for another caste battle in the byeelection scheduled to be held on September 13. The BJP indicated that the byeelection will be held on caste lines when it decided at its daylong meeting in Bangalore on Sunday to field Dr Vishwanath as its nominee.
The BJP had earlier thought of waiting till the Congress finalises its candidate for Kadur. This was because it had plans to woo either former MLA K M Krishnamurthy's wife Sujatha or his brother Kemparaju to join the BJP and contest the byeelection.
The Assembly seat has fallen vacant after K M Krishnamurthy (Congress) died of illness in a private hospital in Bangalore last month.
JD(S) has already declared that its MLC Y S V Datta, who contested unsuccessfully in 2008 Assembly polls, will be its candidate this time too. The Congress is likely to give ticket to Sujatha Krishnamurthy or Kemparaju or Krishnamurthy's son Sharath.
Kadur has a peculiar constituency profile since its first election in 1952. Lingayat and Kuruba communities, which have almost equal population, have been playing an important role in its profile. Though they have equally striven hard for the overall development of the constituency, politically these two communities have always tried to overpower each other.
Consequently, all the nine legislators who represented this constituency in the last 13 elections belonged only to either Lingayat or Kuruba communities. No other community could win the election there.
Political parties too had decided their candidates only on caste equations. If one party fielded Kuruba candidate, the other had fielded a Lingayat as its nominee. The fight here has always been between only these two communities.
Krishnamurthy, a prominent Kuruba leader, could win the election successively four times from 1994, since he could play successfully on caste equation. He used to host caste specific conferences involving the religious leaders of respective communities all over the constituency. He left a legacy of overall development in the constituency.
However, the 2008 election witnessed a shift in this equation. Y S V Datta, a Brahmin, could come very close to victory. He lost to Krishnamurthy by a margin of around 3,000 votes. Dr Vishwanath (BJP) (Lingayath) came third. This division of votes among KMK, Datta and Dr Vishwanath was also construed as a castebased division among the voters. While Kurubas supported KMK and Lingayats supported Vishwanath, other communities supported Datta.
There are three possibilities: "thindunnoru" (nonvegetarians), most of whom belong to backward communities, uniting across community lines and supporting a Kuruba candidate or Lingayat, cutting across their differences among the subgroups, come together and support a Lingayat candidate, else the equation that worked in 2008 election may get repeated.