The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has constituted two panels -- the election campaign committee and the election management committee -- ahead of the assembly polls due in the next two months. The committees were announced by BJP President J P Nadda and included a 25-member election campaign committee headed by Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai.
One key pointer coming from the announcement is the appointment of firebrand leader and Union Minister of State for Agriculture Shobha Karandlaje as the head of the 14-member election management committee. A two-time MP from Udupi-Chikkamagalur, Karandlaje is a long-time close confidant of BJP strongman and former chief minister BS Yediyurappa aka BSY. Her name figures in the other committee also.
By appointing Karandlaje and Bommai as the head of the two panels, BJP has given prominence to the two powerful communities -- the Vokkaligas and Lingayats respectively.
Karandlaje is not from the community's heartland of Mandya-Hassan but from coastal Karnataka. She has carved a niche for herself through her hard work, both in the party organization as well as in the government during the tenures of Yediyurappa and Jagdish Shettar as CMs. This is also the first time that she will take up a party responsibility in the state after her maiden election to the Lok Sabha in 2014.
Karandlaje's panel is tasked with formulating the party strategy for the polls The party may also be testing her abilities and the high command may keep her in mind in the post-poll scenario. Popularly known as 'Shobhakka' (akka is elder sister in Kannada), she is also a member of the campaign committee.
Yediyurappa's supporters were expecting their leader to be appointed as the head of the election campaign committee. It was not to be. Bommai, who has been facing a testing time as Chief Minister has been entrusted with that job. This comes as a sort of morale booster for Bommai, who has not been announced as the CM candidate by the party. Bommai is a Lingayat, like BSY.
BSY has to be content with being a member of the Bommai committee. However, his son, BY Vijayendra is also a member of the panel. This is seen as significant for Yediyurappa, who is grooming Vijayendra as his successor. The former CM, who has retired from electoral politics, has declared that Vijayendra would be the party candidate from Shikaripura (in Shivamogga district).
However, it remains to be seen if the party seconds his choice. It may be recalled that the party refused to bow to pressure from BSY who wanted his son to contest from Varuna constituency in Mysuru district in 2018 -- Vijayendra had even taken a house on rent in the constituency and started campaigning when the party put brakes on his ambition. Yediyurappa's elder son, B Y Raghavendra, is a third-time MP from Shivamogga.
The Hindutva party has been riding on the loyalty of the Lingayats for close to three decades and hopes to continue the same this time too. The party's main strength flows from Yediyurappa, a Lingayat, who, along with others, has built the party from the scratch. As regards Vokkaligas, BJP desperately needs their support to cross the majority mark (113 in a House of 224) should the 2018 numbers remain more or less the same.
For the record, BJP has never won a majority in Karnataka and always depended on defections, as in 2019 or on coalition partners, to assume power.
The saffron party is laying strong focus on the Vokkaliga stronghold of the Old Mysore region and Hassan, where the party has traditionally performed poorly. Union Home Minister Amit Shah has already visited the region once and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the new Bengaluru-Mysuru Expressway on March 12 (Sunday) in Mandya, the hotbed of Vokkaliga politics. These show the importance the party attaches to the region.
As regards the others in the panels, the party has brought in sulking former CMs Shettar and Sadananda Gowda as members of the campaign committee which has no place for the controversial, outspoken MPs Tejaswi Surya and Pratap Simha, Minister Sunil Kumar, MLA and Yeddyyurappa's critic Basanagouda Patil Yatnal. The party has made Tejaswini Ananth Kumar, wife of late minister Ananth Kumar, as Karandlaje team's member.
(B S Arun is a senior journalist based in Bengaluru)