The Karnataka Chief Minister is a clear case of “yesterday’s hero, today’s villain”, but is he being made a scapegoat by certain disgruntled elements in the party. A year after Siddaramaiah brought Congress to power in the state, he is under pressure from his own legislators and the party bosses in Delhi. Reason: Congress could win just nine seats against the BJP’s 17 in the just concluded Lok Sabha seats.
The difference in the vote share per cent between the Congress and the BJP is just 2.2 per cent with Congress scoring 40.8 percent and BJP getting 43 per cent, but it has to be seen in the light that BJP made a remarkable comeback from the last year’s Assembly election debacle when it got just 20 per cent vote share.
Though not considered a referendum on Siddaramaiah’s government, the LS results are a jolt for the chief minister. The poor score could have impacted his position, if not for the fact that the high command has lost all right to take authority. Despite not being able to cross the double digit mark, Karnataka elected 20 per cent of the total seats won by the Congress in the country.
“There is no question of quitting over the results. These elections were fought on national issues,” Siddaramaiah said, admitting Modi wave led to the Congress’ poor show. The Congress’ internal report obtained by the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee, however, had clearly hinted that the party wouldn’t cross 10 seats. Siddaramaiah, however, was quick to dismiss these reports prior to the counting on May 16. “Do they (those who gave reports) have more information than us?” he asked reiterating that Congress will win at least 18 to 20 seats.
Siddaramaiah was in the forefront of Congress campaign across Karnataka addressing highest number of rallies and hoped that his populist schemes like cheap rice, loan waiver among others was confident of winning at least 18 to 20 seats.He was also very aggressive in taking on Narendra Modi during the campaign. In one of the rallies in his home town Mysore, Siddaramaiah termed Modi as “mass murderer”. But, he had to suffer a setback in his home town, where Congress candidate A H Vishwanath was humbled by political greenhorn and journalist Pratap Simha. In the neighbouring Mandya too, the party lost to the JD(S).
Some senior leaders are said to have criticised Siddaramaiah for neglecting the dominant Lingayat and Vokkaliga castes while appeasing the Ahinda vote bank an acronym in Kannada for minorites, backward classes and dalits. Some even attribute the poor performance to his oneupmanship in the government.
The defence, given by the Siddaramaiah group is that the CM was not completely responsible for the selection of all 28 candidates in the state. “How can you blame when the party high command selected candidates according to their whims and fancies?” questioned a Siddaramaaiah confidant who didn’t wish to be named. The Congress experiment of selecting candidates thorough primaries failed to yield any results as both C Narayanaswamy (Bangalore North) and B Janardhan Poojary (Dakshina Kananda) have suffered humiliating defeats.
Though, Congress may not take any action against Siddaramaiah in the near future, the party is likely to clip his powers.