BJP fields senior leaders to quell K'taka rebellion

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, April 16

The ruling BJP has tasked top leaders with crisis management in Karnataka as the party faces a rebellion in more than 20 seats ahead of the May 10 Assembly elections.

With former CM Jagadish Shettar resigning as MLA on Sunday, amid the likelihood of joining the Congress soon, the BJP directed party’s Karnataka election in charge and Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister and Dharwad MP Pralhad Joshi, CM Basavaraj Bommai, ex-CM BS Yediyurappa and state president Nalin Kumar Kateel to engage the rebels and convince them to neither quit the party nor file nominations as Independents.

Pradhan was in Belagavi on Sunday after the BJP denied ticket to two MLAs and fielded seven newcomers.

A rough estimate shows the BJP has dropped 16 MLAs and fielded 52 new faces for the upcoming elections.

Top leaders who have quit the party so far over ticket denial are Shettar (whose candidature from the Hubbali-Dharwad central seat has not been announced yet; the BJP is yet to field a candidate from the seat); former deputy CM Laxman Savadi (who joined the Congress after quitting the BJP over denial of ticket from Athani); MLAs MP Kumaraswamy from Mudigere and Goolihatti Shekhar from Hosadurga and MLCs R Shankar from Ranebennur.

BJP sources said threat of defections on the eve of the elections is a cause for concern and needed to be addressed, with Karnataka seen as a crucial state.

Although Yediyurappa put up a brave face today over the resignation of Shettar, saying “the BJP gave him everything and people will teach him a lesson…let him go”, party sources continued to work overtime to manage the brewing crisis.

The BJP has set a target of 150 seats out of 224 in the Assembly and is conscious of the damage rebels can cause, having burnt its fingers in Himachal Pradesh where revolt by several senior leaders was the principal reason for the BJP’s loss to the Congress.

A source said replacing MLAs in Gujarat, PM Narendra Modi’s home state, was easy, and the party reaped benefits of the radical move in the form of a historic 2022 win, the experiment was hard to replicate in Karnataka, which has its own caste and regional dynamics. Shettar, for instance, is an influential Lingayat leader of north Karnataka. Lingayats make up nearly 20% of the state’s population.