Yediyurappa does it again

Radhika Ramaseshan

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Senior Journalist

BS YEDIYURAPPA, the BJP’s old warrior, was never one to give up despite being buffeted by challenges from within and outside his party. On December 9, he proved he was not one to be passed over. In the mega bypolls that took place in Karnataka—15 of them, with two RK Nagar and Maski left to be notified—the BJP won 12, putting the incumbent government and CM Yediyurappa in a happy place. Monday’s verdict ensured that he crossed the half-way mark of 113 in the 224-member Karnataka legislature (that has one nominated member) with a majority of 117, up from the 105 he had when he toppled the Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) government. Had the BJP won a bare minimum of seven seats, he might have saved his government, but its fate would have hung in the balance. Had the BJP secured less than seven, it would have marked the end of the CM’s tenure.

However, the small cushion of comfort afforded to Yediyurappa comes with a price tag and with serious implications for long-term political stability and morality. He will likely accommodate the 15 new victors in his ministerial council because that was what they were promised in lieu of defecting from the Congress and the JD(S). He constituted his first Cabinet amidst pulls and pressures and procrastination by the BJP’s central command that sought to give an impression that the CM will be yoked to Delhi.

Second, the Karnataka outcome took the phenomenon of defections and cross-party migrations to a new level. The BJP quickly spread the word that instead of punishing turncoats, as conventional wisdom would say, voters rewarded them and returned them mostly with big margins. Bengaluru’s latest edition of ‘Operation Kamala’—as the political skullduggery was christened when it was first used in Karnataka by the BJP to shore up its legislative strength—has reduced the anti-defection law to a travesty, and rendered loyalties and ideologies, irrelevant. There couldn’t be a more telling illustration of using means to justify the ends. In this case, the ‘end’ was giving Karnataka a ‘stable’ administration under Yediyurappa. The BJP successfully denigrated the Congress-JD(S) coalition as inherently unstable, but that was a cover to conceal what was a rank caste-centred campaign by the CM in the bypolls. He played up his antecedents as a leader of the dominant Lingayat community wherever the BJP was seriously threatened by rebellion.

Embracing renegades, especially those from ‘secular’ parties, became a norm for the BJP in the nineties. However, its leaders were circumspect when it came to formalising the inductions with tickets to fight an election because they were acutely aware that theirs was a cadre-run party that didn’t take too kindly to firming up long-term relationships with deserters with exceptions. Therefore, when Yediyurappa announced with alacrity that 13 of the 15 Congress and JD(S) defectors would get tickets to contest the bypolls, occasioned by their resignation as legislators from their parent parties, the announcement was received negatively by the BJP. He was reminded that Karnataka was the only southern state the BJP managed to hang on to after long years of hard work put in by the RSS. It could not afford to ‘dilute’ its ‘original character’ in the pursuit of power.

The argument was up against a wall because as the principal architect of the BJP’s growth and victory in Karnataka, Yediyurappa still exercises the sort of decree over political decisions that other regional chiefs do not. But loyalists the state over were in arms over his move. In the Hosakote Assembly, Sharath Bachegowda, who was a secretary of the Karnataka BJP’s youth wing and is the son of BN Bachegowda, the Chikkaballapur MP, protested when the ticket went to N Nagaraju (MTB), a former Congress legislator. Bachegowda senior was warned that ‘action’ would be taken against him and Sharath, if the latter went too far. Sharath went ahead, fought as an Independent and trounced Nagaraju by 11,484 votes. Yediyurappa is reported to be working on Bachegowda senior to persuade his victor-son to rejoin the BJP.

In Gokak, Ramesh Jarikiholi, a former Congressman, walked away with a BJP ticket and drew the ire of Ashok Pujari, a former BJP leader, who was a claimant. Jarikiholi’s brother, Lakhan, was the Congress candidate. But when Pujari filed his nomination from the JD(S), the Congress discreetly asked its workers to support Pujari. Ramesh won but it was Lakhan, and not Pujari, who was the first runner-up. This, despite the fact that Pujari was the lone Lingayat while the Jarikiholi brothers came from the Valmiki/Nayak tribe. Yediyurappa walked the extra mile at Gokak, imploring the Lingayats to vote the BJP and enable him, a Lingayat, to continue in office.

Indeed, Yediyurappa was the centrepiece. Apart from the veto exercised over tickets, he was the sole campaigner who carried the electioneering on the back of local and not national issues, and mustered all the emotions to leave voters teary-eyed.

The Congress’s battle was led by Dinesh Gundurao, the state president, and Siddharamaiah, the former CM. Party ace strategist DK Shivakumar conspicuously kept himself out of the operation, fuelling speculation that his equation with Siddharamaiah was still patchy.

Having got a new lease of life as it were, Yediyurappa, whose hands were tied the day the BJP ‘high command’ appointed three deputy CMs to rein him in, might hope for the days when his word was law, until a corruption charge proved to be his undoing. It’s an extraordinary situation for the BJP’s central brass and Yediyurappa. He’s their only bet in a southern state where the leaders failed to find a replacement through a long-drawn process of trial and error. Like the proverbial cat with nine lives, he survives to see another day.