BENGALURU: At a time when politicians are distributing largesse to woo the electorate, and hoping to bag party tickets for the upcoming elections in Karnataka, former BJP minister Sogadu Shivanna of Tumakuru has set out on an election mission.
Shivanna (74) has hit the streets of Tumakuru under the scorching sun, with two jolige (cloth bags) hanging from either of his shoulders, looking much like a seeker of alms. As he meets the electorate, he has just one request — a currency note for one sack, and a vote for the other. It’s only symbolic for now, but Shivanna is making a point to his opponents — that he can fight the elections if he gets the people’s moral support.
Shivanna is by no means poor; he has a posh bungalow, and certainly does not need the people’s money. Yet, one bag is filling up with cash, and he is visibly receiving an overwhelming response from the residents. They have been filling one of his sacks with cash — from Rs 1 to Rs 2,000. He said he would use the same cash to pay his election deposit while filing his nomination papers, and also use it for his election expenditure.
Shivanna, an RSS strongman who won the Tumakuru seat for four consecutive terms (1994-2013) has resorted to this kind of exercise as a strategy to seek the BJP ticket in the upcoming polls. In 2018, he had sacrificed his ticket for incumbent city MLA G B Jyothiganesh, son of Lok Sabha member GS Basavaraju.
The veteran leader, who ‘championed’ the Hindu cause in his political career, had spent over one and half years in Bengaluru Central jail in the company of stalwarts like L K Advani, Madhu Dandavate, H D Deve Gowda, among others. “He was part of the delegation Prime Minister Narendra Modi led to Lal Chowk in Jammu and Kashmir, where they hoisted the national flag in the nineties, and also worked as a ‘kar sevak’ in Ayodhya to set up the Ram temple,” said K P Mahesh, his supporter.
“Candidates, including the incumbent MLAs, have been mocking democracy through inducements. I want to send a message against that, and also corruption which has become rampant these days. I will certainly get the BJP ticket as the incumbent MLA is corrupt,” he told TNIE. Both the MLA and his father were originally from the Congress, he pointed out. Already, Shivanna has covered a Dalit colony and APMC yard in the city, where the response has been good.