As the battle lines have been drawn for the May 10 Assembly elections in Karnataka, the stage is set for the final push by Congress, which is keen to keep up the momentum and BJP that will go the whole hog to turn the tide in the nick of time.
In the last few weeks, the ruling and opposition parties were busy with ticket distribution. The BJP's top leadership which adopted a strategy to field a large number of new faces to beat the anti-incumbency factor was busy containing the rebellion and calming some frayed nerves. Congress and JDS were quick to make the most of the situation by accommodating some senior leaders left out of the BJP’s list of candidates.
The political dynamics that unfolded in the last few days appear to be conducive to Congress, which is making all-out efforts to stage a comeback. But BJP is working overtime and will bring all its tried and tested strategies to change the momentum in its favour.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi dialing former minister KS Eshwarappa, who was asked to retire from electoral politics, shows the Central leadership’s concerns about the recent developments in the state and is willing to do everything it can to retain power in Karnataka. That will be crucial for the party’s plans for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. It has deployed the party’s Lingayat strongman BS Yediyurappa to contain the rebellion and take the initiative to keep BJP’s Lingayat support base intact, while the BJP is going on an offensive to paint Congress as anti-Lingayat. BJP will be concerned about a repeat of the 2013 scenario when Yediyurappa’s exit from the BJP resulted in a vote split and brought Congress to power with a clear majority.
This time around, Yediyurappa is at the helm of affairs, but he is not the CM face. High-profile exits of former CM Jagadish Shettar and former DyCM Laxman Savadi — both Lingayat leaders from North Karnataka — have bolstered the Congress’ efforts to woo the community.
Even before Shettar, Savadi and some others joined its ranks, Congress was making concerted efforts in that direction and was keen to undo the damage caused to its image by the push for a separate religion status for the Veerashaiva-Lingayats ahead of 2018 polls.
Congress is now going all guns blazing to breach BJP’s Lingayat scaffold even as it hopes to get support from Vokkaligas and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) as its state president DK Shivakumar and former CM Siddaramaiah are among its CM aspirants.
It will try to keep the narrative around corruption and price rise and amplify its pre-poll guarantees to woo voters. Congress is trying to project it as a ‘local’ Karnataka election and not let the BJP ride the Modi wave.
BJP, on its part, will be banking on the Modi factor to a great extent, apart from the double-engine government’s development agenda, beating anti-incumbency by fielding new faces, social engineering after its government enhanced quota for many communities, and implementing internal reservation among the Scheduled Castes.
Despite all that, the Lingayat community support will be critical as even a slight erosion in the segment can undo the gains made from the rest.
However, that is not the case with Congress. It is enough for the party to make big gains if it manages to woo a small percentage of BJP’s Lingayat supporters. That is where the Jagadish Shettar factor comes into play. The former CM would not have been a big threat to BJP had he chosen to go independent or to stay neutral; but with Congress, he can be a force to reckon with in some constituencies.
The question BJP should be asking itself is not how many seats Shettar will win for Congress, but how many seats he could damage its prospects.
On its part, the BJP is gung-ho about taking the battle to Shettar’s home turf and making his election from the Hubballi-Dharwad Central seat difficult. That would also help to restrict him to his constituency.
Shettar’s constituency will be among the few seats that would be most keenly watched, apart from Varuna, where Siddaramaiah is taking on BJP minister V Somanna, and Kanakapura, where Shivakumar will face minister R Ashoka from BJP.
In the next few days, PM Modi, UP CM Yogi Adityanath and a large number of BJP Central leaders will take to a ‘carpet-bombing’ campaign. It will be interesting to see how Congress manages to keep up its momentum as well as its local narrative.