BENGALURU: With just two days for counting, the ruling BJP seems to be bullish on getting the required numbers. While part of that confidence stems from the exit poll results, the other assurance for the party is the result of Operation Kamala 1.0 in 2008.
A number of parallels can be drawn between the 2008 and 2019 bypolls, held under similar circumstances to seven seats. The BJP had won five of the seven seats. The eighth seat, Maddur, did not fall vacant due to Operation Kamala, but because the MLA had passed away.
As he is doing now, Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa had sought a vote for ‘stability’ and gone with the candidates who had defected from other parties to strengthen his minority government, that was largely dependent on Independents. Of the seven seats the party had sought to get elected from, it won five, taking their numbers to 115. With the Independents on board, the number touched 121.
It may be recalled that the party managed to get seven MLAs to resign — three from the Congress and four from JDS. The 2008 elections were also held in December.
While the CM managed to get five of them elected, the Congress, under the same Opposition leader Siddaramaiah, drew a blank. In sharp contrast, the JDS managed to win two seats, besides Maddur. A look at the 2008 Operation Kamala shows it was a success, with five hits. The defectors who won were Umesh Katti, Shivana Gouda, Balachandra Jarkiholi, Anand Asnotikar and Narasimha Swamy.
In 2008, Yediyurappa could muster only 110 seats, whereas the Congress had 80 MLAs and JDs had 28 MLAs. He employed a strategy to rope in the six Independents, taking his numbers to a safe 116. In order to insure himself against threats of ‘desertions’, he had got seven MLAs from the Congress-JDS to defect, creating a strikingly similar situation, necessitating byelections in Arabhavi, Hukkeri, Doddaballapur, Karwar, Devadurga, Madhugiri and Turuvekere.
In Arabhavi, Balachandra Jarkiholi won by a margin of over 32,000 votes in spite of 77% voting, in Hukkeri, which also polled 77%, Umesh Katti won by 67,000 votes, showing that the voters decisively backed the defectors. In Doddaballapur (71% polling), Narasimha Swamy won by 13,000 votes, in Karwar (64% voting), Anand Asnotikar won by over 17,000 votes. Devadurga recorded a mere 50%, where Shivanagouda Naik won by about 16,000 votes.
The two who lost were C Channigappa, who stood a distant third with about 31,000 votes in Madhugiri, where 66% voting was recorded, and Lakshminarayan, who was defeated in Turuvekere (68% voting) by about 3,500 votes.
Former CM HD Kumaraswamy’s wife Anita Kumaraswamy had won from Madhugiri and MP Krishnappa from Turuvukere. Kalpana Siddaraju of the JDS had won Maddur, taking the place of her late husband.
Political analyst Mahadev Prakash, who incidentally is media adviser to CM BS Yediyurappa, said, “As a thumb rule, a smaller voting percentage has favoured the ruling party, and a larger voting percentage means the ‘conscientious’ voters have come to vote and could go against the ruling party. A conscientious voter votes by his conscience.”