BENGALURU: Prominent Lingayat community leader and former CM B S Yediyurappa loyalist H D Thammaiah joining the Congress, along with his supporters here on Sunday, came as a setback for BJP national general secretary and Chikkamagaluru MLA C T Ravi.
Thammaiah, a former municipal council president, was with Ravi for almost 15 years and was felt let down when the latter had allegedly ignored him for some time. He was aspiring to be the Chikmagalur Development Authority (CDA) president, but Ravi gave Anand, a person from a linguistic minority, the role. Meanwhile, the monopoly of Ravi’s relative Sudarshan in the contracts had irked local BJP leaders, who chose Thammaiah to be their leader and expected him to be the Congress’ nominee in the upcoming polls.
Ravi, a Vokkaliga, who won the seat for four consecutive terms has been looking for the fifth straight win and he is among the state’s top BJP leaders who aspires to be the chief minister in future. After he became BJP national general secretary, according to sources, he changed his political operations, leaving a section of party workers in the lurch.
Meanwhile, the backward classes’ appeasement politics did not go down well with upper-caste political leaders, especially from the Lingayat community, political pundits observed. “ In the coming polls, if the Lingayats, Muslims, SCs, STs and OBCs unite in favour of a Congress candidate, it will become tough for Ravi as the Vokkaligas are less in number in the constituency,” a leader remarked.
Chikkamagaluru is significant as it gave a political rebirth to former prime minister late Indira Gandhi by re-electing her in the 1978 bypolls. Now, with the BJP leaders joining the party, KPCC president D K Shivakumar claimed that political change is blowing in the state.
“Chikkamagaluru is a district with a history of giving a message of political change to the state and the nation. People of this district are intelligent. Those who have joined should carry out membership drives at the booth level extensively and send a message to the BJP headquarters in New Delhi,” he said.