Basavaraj Bommai

Lok Sabha Polls: BJP Releases Second List; Gadkari to Contest From Nagpur, Khattar From Karnal

Union minister Piyush Goyal will contest from Mumbai North and Anurag Thakur from Himachal Pradesh’s Hamirpur.

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party unveiled its second list of 72 candidates spanning 11 states for the Lok Sabha elections.

Several big names like Union ministers Nitin Gadkari, Piyush Goyal, Anurag Thakur, and former Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar are among those listed.

Khattar, who resigned as the chief minister of Haryana on Tuesday (March 12), will contest from Karnal constituency.

Union minister Piyush Goyal will contest from Mumbai North and Anurag Thakur from Himachal Pradesh’s Hamirpur.

Nitin Gadkari has chosen to contest from Nagpur, and former Karnataka chief minister Basavaraj Bommai will be contesting from Haveri.

This announcement follows the release of BJP’s first list of 195 candidates for the upcoming polls last week.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is slated to run for the Varanasi seat in Uttar Pradesh, while home minister Amit Shah will contest from Gandhinagar in Gujarat.

See the full list:

BJP second list 2024 by The Wire on Scribd

Karnataka Budget Attempts to Present Congress as Welfare-Oriented, Blames BJP for Financial Mess

Chief minister Siddaramaiah said his government will earmark Rs 52,000 crore a year for fulfilling its five ‘guarantees’, and the revenue for the same would be generated by effective tax collection.

Bengaluru: As chief minister Siddaramaiah presented the first budget of the Congress government in Karnataka on Friday, July 7, the focus of his presentation was very clear: an inclusive budget stressing new welfare schemes while ensuring that some of the key highlights of the Congress manifesto find a mention in the document.

Presenting a record 14th budget, his seventh as chief minister, Siddaramaiah devoted a considerable part of his speech to rundown the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled Centre and the previous state BJP government, underlining that their policies, refusal to devolve funds and maladministration were the reasons for dismal fiscal management.

One of the highlights of the budget speech, which Siddaramaiah took 2 hours and 45 minutes to read, was the bunch of five guarantee schemes aimed at women and youth. He earmarked Rs 52,000 crore to meet the expenses incurred by these schemes even as he chided those who criticised these “guarantees” as “freebies”. Cleverly, he mentioned that these guarantees were needed to ward off the effects of inflationary effects on the common people “resulting from the policies of the policies of the central government”. A total of 1.3 crore people are expected to be benefited by these schemes.

Ever since the election results were declared on May 13 and the BJP faced drubbing, the five guarantees have become the talking point of everybody, especially the BJP. There was a tug of war on a daily basis between the BJP and Congress over the implementation of the schemes. It must also be noted that the BJP had rarely touched upon the Congress’s guarantees during the election campaign while solely devoting its campaign to Hindutva-related issues.

File photo. Scenes from the Karnataka assembly on February 16, 2021. Photo: Screengrab

There was also curiosity on how the Congress government would make available the needed funds for the programmes. Everyone expected Siddaramaiah to impose heavy taxes resulting in a huge burden to the common man. However, the chief minister deftly managed the issue, refused to give the BJP and the Janata Dal(S) any room to criticise him and announced that mopping up of resources would be only in the form of 20% excise duty. Restructuring of property guidance value has been mentioned although its details are yet to be announced. Motor vehicle taxes will be revised.

Karnataka witnessed several instances of ‘moral policing’, communal incidents, murders and tensions during the tenure of the BJP government, especially in the last two years. Siddaramaiah said in his speech: “Stringent action will be taken against those who harass people in the name of ‘moral policing’, spread fake news through social media and disturb social harmony. Our government will take all measures to ensure law and order, restore peace and communal harmony in the society…. We are….committed to taking decisions on matters impacting public interest in an equitable manner by a convergence of diverse thoughts, ensuring freedom to live without fears and with interdependence of all the people. Justice is not discrimination or polarisation or creating divisions in the society.”

The previous Basavaraj Bommai government had implemented the National Education Policy. In fact, Karnataka was the first state to do so in the country. However, as promised in the Congress manifesto, Siddaramaiah announced the scrapping of the NEP.

“The NEP implemented by the Central government is incompatible with the federal system of governance. It has several anomalies which undermine the constitution and democracy. Uniform Education System does not suit a nation like India which has diverse religions, languages and cultures. A New Education Policy will be formulated keeping in mind the local social, cultural and economic milieu of the state.”

Blaming the Centre and the Bommai government for neglecting Karnataka in the devolution of funds as earmarked by the Finance Commission, Siddaramaiah pointed out that even in GST, the state has not got its share. He also blamed Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman. “Though the Union Finance Minister has been elected from our state and despite the claims of double engine government, the previous government failed in getting these grants from the Central Government.”

The chief minister also announced that the Agricultural Produce Market Committees Act in the state would be scrapped “by amending the APMC Act, the previous government weakened the healthy marketing network and created uncertainty in the lives of lakhs of farmers who depended on APMCs for their livelihoods”.

The protest by the farmers, especially in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab, against the Centre’s farm policy, went on for more than a year. The protest ended only after the Centre announced the withdrawal of the controversial scheme. However, the then BJP government implemented the policy in Karnataka.

The delivery boys and other workers of the e-commerce sector are generally ignored. However, the state budget, recognising their plight, announced insurance coverage for them. “In order to provide social security to the ‘Gig Workers’ in the unorganised sector, i.e., employed as full-time/part-time delivery personnel in e-commerce companies like Swiggy, Zomato, Amazon, etc., insurance facility of total Rs.4 lakh will be provided which includes, life insurance of Rs. 2 lakh and accidental insurance of Rs. 2 lakh. The entire insurance premium will be borne by the government,” Siddaramaiah said.

It was also an ‘Ahinda’ budget. The CM earmarked funds for pilgrimage centres of the Jain community, Rs 100 crore for the Karnataka State Christian Development Corporation, for the protection of 40,000 Wakf properties in the state, for the development of Gurudwara etc.

B.S. Arun is a senior journalist based in Bengaluru.

Why Bengaluru Voted for the BJP When Karnataka Voted It Out

The saffron party won 16 of the 28 seats in the capital, five more than the previous election. The party was able to retain its vote share across the state primarily because of an impressive showing in Bengaluru.

Despite a comprehensive defeat in Karnataka, the BJP retained its 36% vote share in Karnataka. This was primarily because of a 5.4% gain in votes in Bengaluru followed by a smaller improvement in Old Mysuru. The saffron party’s performance in Bengaluru was the silver lining as it lost seats/votes everywhere else, and votes gained in the city compensated for its losses. It won 16 of the 28 seats in the capital, five more than the previous election. The Congress won the remaining 12. It received an impressive 46% of votes in the city, begging the question, why did Bengaluru buck the trend?

Pro-incumbent factor

The primary explanation is the persistence of an existing political trend of pro-incumbency at the constituency level in the city – very few seats change hands, and nearly 60% of seats have been won by the same party and MLA for the past three-four elections.

The BJP benefitted from ‘Operation Kamala’, or the defection of several MLAs from the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular) [JD(S)] to the saffron party in 2019. The defections, which reportedly large sums of money, brought down the Congress-JD(S) alliance government headed by H.D. Kumaraswamy.

Of the five seats gained by the BJP in Bengaluru, four were gained in 2019 when sitting Congress and JD(S) MLAs defected. The BJP entered this election with 15 seats in Bengaluru and mainly succeeded in retaining them.

Seats gained by the BJP in Bengaluru (compared to 2018)

Constituency	Winning BJP MLA	How it was gained
Rajarajeshwari Nagar	Munirathna	MLA defected from Congress in 2019
Mahalakshmi Layout	K. Gopalaiah	MLA defected from JD(S) in 2019
Yeshvanthapura	S. T. Somashekhar	MLA defected from Congress in 2019
KR Puram (Krishnarajapuram)	Byrati Basavaraj	MLA defected from Congress in 2019
Jayanagar	CK Ramamurthy	Won from Congress in 2023
Dasarahalli	S Muniraju	Won from JD(S) in 2023

Source: ECI, IndiaVotes

If we look at the BJP’s impressive vote share performance, the contribution of the MLAs who defected is even more striking. Of the 5.4% vote share gain, 4.1% came from the four seats where sitting MLAs defected! As the chart shows, the BJP’s vote share in Bengaluru grew from 41% to 46.4% – but it received a much larger share of these votes from the four defector seats. Clearly, the defections of popular incumbents and retaining existing seats played a huge role in the party’s Bengaluru ‘victory’.

Source: ECI, LokDhaba-TCPD, Author’s calculation

But this successful retention is simply consistent with Bengaluru’s particular and strong pro-incumbent tendency. Parties easily retain seats and incumbent MLAs keep getting re-elected in the city. Fifteen seats (54% of the total) have been held by the same party and MLA since 2008. A few MLAs have served up to five terms. Moreover, 24 seats (85%) have seen the same party or candidate win in recent elections.

Strikingly, this time only three seats changed hands, which means 25 seats (90%) remained with the party that held them before the election. This is extraordinarily low, especially in a state that shows very high seat volatility.

My conversations with residents across constituencies before the elections revealed that most were confident their incumbent MLA (and party) would retain the seat, and many supported their MLAs due to the “good work” they had done. This cut across party lines: even residents with clear partisan affiliations expressed support for sitting MLAs from a rival party. When I tried to understand this support, I found that these MLAs have found ways to reinforce their popularity and support through civic work, attentive grievance redressal and other initiatives to show that they care about their constituents.

A small restaurant proprietor in C.V. Raman Nagar reached out to sitting BJP MLA S. Raghu when he faced issues and found him to be helpful and responsive. The residents felt he cared and spoke up for them. Residents talked about MLAs getting houses built for them and delivering other types of civic work like building hospitals. There has been some debate led by civic action groups about whether this is in a legislator’s mandate – and whether this has contributed to delayed elections and reduced funding to Bengaluru’s municipal body, BBMP. MLAs also demonstrated they care during the pandemic by providing food relief during the lockdown. This relatively easy initiative had recall value for voters in Mahadevapura.

This helped the BJP, partly because it had more incumbents, but more because support for these incumbents mitigated the electoral impact of general anti-incumbency against an unpopular government. Even supporters acknowledged the Basavaraj Bommai government’s corruption and lack of development. While defectors who joined in 2019 won (and brought a lot of votes), the only seat the BJP lost to the Congress was Govindraj Nagar, where it didn’t nominate the incumbent MLA. This shows how dependent the party was on its incumbent MLAs and how its success should be credited to them.

The two seats retained despite a change in the candidate were Mahadevpura, where the sitting BJP MLA’s wife won, and Pulakeshinagar, where the fallout of the DJ Halli violence led the Congress to sideline its incumbent and still retain the seat. Three seats changed hands: Govindraj Nagar, where the BJP didn’t nominate the incumbent, Dasarahalli was lost by the flailing JD(S), and Jayanagar was lost after five recounts by a slim margin of 16 votes amid a lot of controversy. Parties mostly re-nominated sitting MLAs and won.

Five incumbents changed parties (four during the 2019 defections) and four of them won (all but Pulakeshinagar). Conversely, in the three seats where the parties changed the candidates, one was lost, one was won by the candidate’s wife and the last was Pulakeshinagar. And of course, most of the BJP’s vote share gain happened in seats where popular incumbents had defected to the party. In Bengaluru, parties are more dependent on their MLAs than the reverse.

Not everyone was happy. Many felt legislators hadn’t improved their lives or developed the constituency. There was potent disaffection with the political class: “everyone is corrupt and equally bad”. Many talked about facing acute economic suffering, but some such disaffected voters didn’t intend to vote as they didn’t “see a point”.

Siddaramaiah outside a polling station in Varuna Vidhan Sabha constituency. Photo: Twitter@INCKarnataka

Bengaluru has consistently seen the lowest voter turnout in Karnataka, only 54.8% this time, compared to the state’s 74%. Though there might be many disillusioned voters, they choose to stay home instead of exercise their franchise. This is likely because they are disillusioned with all parties and don’t see a credible alternative. This strengthens the pro-incumbency effect because voters unhappy with the incumbent don’t turn out to vote him/her out, which mutes the impact of anti-incumbency in the city. Turnout actually dropped in Bengaluru in 2023 though it rose across Karnataka, suggesting that anti-incumbency brought people out to vote out the BJP across the state, but they stayed home in the capital city – consistent with past voting behaviour.

Also Read: Decoding the Karnataka Election Results in 18 Charts

Resonance of BJP’s narrative and the role of class

Despite the unpopularity of their government, the BJP retained its position and increased its votes. Its votes share of 46.4% is the party’s best performance since the 2008 delimitation, widening the gap with Congress. So why did Bengaluru residents vote for the BJP?

The many BJP supporters I encountered didn’t dissent from the narrative of economic suffering or claim things were good. Few liked Bommai or B.S. Yediyurappa. When asked why they were voting for the BJP, what emerged was a resonance with the party’s narrative on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, national issues and the opposition. The biggest factor was support for Modi. Part of this was national security: “Modi has made the country and military strong, and he’s needed to counter threats to India.” Another was his economic management during the present crisis: “Though things are bad, look at Sri Lanka and Pakistan’s collapse.” Despite struggling to make ends meet, some believed ‘the economy’ was strong. The “double engine” narrative justified the choice: “Modi needs the BJP in the state to work properly.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders at a rally in Shimoga. Photo: Twitter/@narendramodi

The second factor was a lack of confidence in the opposition. Many BJP voters felt crime and lawlessness would increase in the city under the Congress. This had a communal undertone, as the third factor was Hindutva: particularly tropes about Muslim violence and criminality, enabled by the opposition. With specific instances, this also drew on national debates – feeding into a narrative that the opposition was favouring Muslims and sheltering criminals, generating a sense threat and insecurity for which the BJP was the bulwark.

This shows the penetration of the BJP’s messaging: people voted for the party despite facing hardship and knowing the government hasn’t performed. Importantly, there was a class divide: lower-class respondents emphasised economic suffering and favoured Congress, while middle-class respondents tended to be ambivalent or pro-BJP. For those facing acute economic distress, the focus was anger against the government for doing little to alleviate their situation; while those who are more secure could claim that things aren’t so bad and focused on other issues. Exit polls showed an 11% lead for the Congress among lower-class voters, indicating strong support.

Bengaluru has seen growth and prosperity contrasting with the rest of Karnataka and has a concentration of people with better economic outcomes. Its per capita GSDP is double the state’s average.

Since economic pain drove the Congress’s success, Bengaluru’s divergent growth trajectory might have contributed to the result. The BJP’s narrative had greater resonance here as economic suffering wasn’t as acute.

Collapse of JD(S) and increasingly bipolar contest in Bengaluru

Another factor in the BJP’s success was the JD(S)’s collapse, as in other parts of the state. The party’s vote share declined by over 7% and it lost both the seats it won in the city five years ago. The BJP’s substantial vote gain appears to be at the expense of the JD(S), as Congress slightly improved its vote share. Here too, the defections played a role, with one of two seats lost through defection. The JD(S) entered the 2023 election holding just one seat.

Bengaluru has become an increasingly bipolar contest as the JD(S)’s vote share has dropped significantly over the past two elections, and this time few residents talked about the party. The incumbency effect exacerbates this: all seats but one was held by a Congress or BJP incumbent, who was the clear favourite in most. Voters who wanted to unseat the incumbent ended up consolidating behind the strongest challenger, usually the Congress or BJP candidate. This is also a reflection of a more bipolar state election. The JD(S) was the runner-up only in 2 seats.

Source: ECI, Author’s analysis

But it would be a mistake to think the BJP just gained from the JD(S)’s losses. First, in an increasingly bipolar contest, the BJP won out against the Congress in attracting voters leaving the JD(S). Second, at the seat level, it is clear that Congress voters switched to the BJP (e.g., where Congress lost to defectors). In seats retained by either party (90%), this time, the JD(S) voters chose either the BJP or the Congress, but more such voters picked BJP because of the other factors substantiated above. It is some consolation to the Congress that it did not lose voters in aggregate and that wherever it did lose voters, it compensated by gaining JD(S) voters elsewhere.

Conclusion

While the BJP appears to have done very well in Bengaluru, a closer analysis of the reasons for this performance suggests little for the party to celebrate. Their gains were primarily due to an existing political trend in the city of re-electing incumbents, and most seats and votes they added were acquired through defections of popular incumbents. Incumbent MLAs have specific ways to reinforce support, and anti-incumbency that hurt the BJP elsewhere did not translate in a city where disaffected voters stay home. They also benefitted from an increasingly bipolar contest, where votes against incumbents were consolidated by a primary BJP/Congress challenger, though more JD(S) voters switched to the BJP. Resonance with the party’s narrative on Modi, national issues, the opposition and Hindutva motivated BJP voters, owing to Bengaluru’s distinctive economic trends. Economic pain that drove the saffron party’s defeat elsewhere wasn’t quite as acute and these other issues had traction. Despite this, the BJP’s celebrations should be muted as the big message from Bengaluru is that voters are so disillusioned that they don’t turn out, and don’t see a credible alternative to incumbents who keep getting re-elected.

Sumer Sharma is an independent political analyst, formerly with the Policy & Insights division at The Economist Group. He holds an MSc in Political Sociology from the London School of Economics.

Did Climate Change and Farm Distress Contribute to the BJP’s Defeat in Karnataka?

The protests by tur dal farmers in Karnataka against the Basavaraj Bommai government are reflective of the exclusively urban vision followed by the BJP under Modi and Shah. The farmers’ anger also contributed to the BJP’s loss in the southern state.

The old saying that ‘victory has a hundred parents but defeat has none’ is being turned upside down after the recent Karnataka elections. There are dozens of reasons why the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost such a critical state, each one contributing to a result that has made Narendra Modi’s campaign theatrics just that much more risible and unconvincing. One issue that has been overlooked has been the BJP’s relative blindness to the impacts of climate change in rural India in general, and rural Karnataka in particular.

Like much of India, parts of Karnataka and Maharashtra saw unseasonal rains this year. Karnataka is the “tur dal” hub of India, but by mid-January, the Kalaburagi district administration reported that of “4.78 lakh hectares areas of Tur in the district, standing tur crop in 1.98 lakh hectares has been badly affected” by wilt disease.

Climate change and electoral cost

Faced with drastic losses, rising prices, and farmers demanding help, the Karnataka state government under the BJP had no real plan to do anything. As it fumbled around for a strategy, protests grew, and the government was forced to announce compensation for crops damaged in Bidar, Kalaburagi, and Yadgiri districts. But here is the catch: compensation for crop loss largely benefits well-off farmers. The logic is simple. Better-off farmers (mostly men, as they own about 80% of all farmland, even if women account for the majority of farm labour) are the ones who are able to afford irrigation and quick action against disease.

Despite unseasonal rains, richer farmers are in a better shape to save more of their crop than poorer ones. Since overall crop production falls, prices rise (as they did for tur dal) so even if richer farmers see a loss in overall production, the price makes up for it, while poor farmers lose much more. Lastly, as anybody who has navigated government compensation mechanisms knows, having good documents, large plots, and social-economic-political pull is key to actually receiving it, and that too, in time.

None of this is unknown. These problems are well documented from a long history of droughts, floods, and the variety of crop-related disasters that the Indian farmer and state have had to deal with since 1947. Climate change has only made the severity and frequency of the problem greater, not radically changing how the farmers suffer or the state works.

One would presume, therefore, that a plan should not have been difficult, that such problems could have been anticipated. In fact, if the Basavaraj Bommai-led state government had acted in a timely manner, an effective state response to a problem affecting the livelihood of people dependent on a traditional crop would have been an excellent basis for election messaging. At least, they would have had more to talk about when they spent Rs 44 crore on advertisements before the elections.

It failed comprehensively. Even as the election results were coming in, farmer organisations were accusing the state government of being niggardly in offering compensation. Some of this may be blamed on the inefficiency and infighting of a state BJP unit that was trying to reinvent itself and hiving off an older guard, but more fundamentally, the BJP at the central and state levels both have made little attempt to understand the challenges of climate change at the rural level. The clearest indicator of this was the three disastrous farm Bills that Modi proposed, whipped through parliament, and then had to withdraw in the face of sustained protests.

In the face of uneven rainfall, more frequent floods and droughts, and falling groundwater levels, the three farm Bills proposed only the creation of a national market for agricultural products. Instead of offering the security of livelihood and the preservation and revival of degraded ecosystems, all that the legislation offered was corporatisation.

This urban-centric worldview is possibly based on much of Modi and Shah’s experience in Gujarat, which was already one of the most urban states in India when they came to power, as it is based on an analysis that as India urbanises, the rural and agricultural population can be ignored for retaining power. (It is worth noting that the most successful agricultural initiative in Gujarat is the use of solar water pumps. This is based on being able to sell excess electricity to the grid, and helps cooperatives of large farmers. The marginal farmer is invisible and irrelevant.)

Both the opposition to the farm laws and the mismanagement of the tur dal crisis in Karnataka seem to indicate that such an exclusively urban vision comes at an electoral cost. More importantly, though, every party in power in a state has to start understanding that the nature of the climate crisis means that problems such as unseasonal rains, killer heatwaves, floods, and droughts will occur at higher frequencies and with greater severity. Nor will these problems remain isolated to the agricultural sector, even if that is where they have the most impact.

So far, political parties have largely paid lip service to the challenge of climate change, if they have spoken of it at all. Receiving large sums from businesses invested in the coal, oil, transport, and real estate sectors, political parties have known well what to focus on. But if all that money cannot save them from crippling defeat at the elections, maybe the issue of climate impacts might actually be starting to become an electoral one.

Omair Ahmad is an author and journalist.

BJP’S Bommai Govt Spent Rs 44.2 Crore of Taxpayer Money on Ads Before Polls, Reveals RTI

“It is common for governments to allocate funds for advertising to raise awareness about schemes available to the public, but it is wrong to spend taxpayers’ money ahead of the elections solely to woo voters,” RTI activist Rajesh Krishanaprasad said.

New Delhi: The previous Basavaraj Bommai led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Karnataka has spent Rs 44.42 crore on advertisements over four months leading up to the Assembly elections, an RTI has revealed.

The money, spent between December 1, 2022, and March 29, 2023, was used to promote the BJP’s own initiatives as well as to counter the opposition’s election campaign, the Indian Express reported.

The Department of Information and Public Relations revealed this information in response to a Right to Information Act (RTI) query filed by Puttur-based activist Rajesh Krishnaprasad, the report said.

The RTI response said that the Bommai government spent Rs 27.46 crore on print media and Rs 16.96 crore on electronic media for publicising their schemes besides countering the then Opposition party’s campaigns, such as the Bharat Jodo Yatra and the Mekedatu march.

The details regarding names of the media houses in which the government spent to place advertisements was not revealed by the department, the report said.

The BJP is also said to have received Rs 5,270 crore out of a total of Rs 9,208 crore or 57% of all total electoral bonds sold till 2022, according to an NDTV report.

Krishnaprasad told the Hindu, “It is common for governments to allocate funds for advertising to raise awareness about schemes available to the public, but it is wrong to spend taxpayers’ money ahead of the elections solely to woo voters.”

“The BJP has spent nearly ₹50 crore and some of the ads were placed only to criticise the Opposition. How can the government exchequer spend money on this,” he asked.

The BJP lost the elections securing only 66 seats and got voted out from the only southern state where it was in power, while the Congress secured a comfortable majority by winning 135 of the 224 seats in the recent elections.

Ramalinga Reddy, Congress’ Karnataka chief, said the then BJP government had wasted the taxpayers’ money through this expenditure. The government’s job is to spend money responsibly, he said.

Speaking to the Indian Express, BS Shivanna, general secretary of Karnataka Congress, described it as a crime. “Generally, the government issues advertisements to publicise its schemes. But BJP used it as a tool politically to counter opposition campaigns. If you see, they gave negative advertisements to shield themselves. The public money has been looted by the previous BJP government,” he said.

Ganesh Karnik of the BJP told the Hindu that the amount spent is not huge and with competitive ad pricing, such costs are common. “The Delhi government had spent more than this for government ads,” he alleged.

Two Constituencies Reflect the Ideological Churning in BJP’s Karnataka Unit

Shikaripura and Shivamogga constituencies are the respective strongholds of B.S. Yediyurappa and K.S. Eshwarappa. The two leaders reflect contrasting dimensions of the state BJP unit and the internal tussle brewing in the saffron family.

Shivamogga: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s strategies for Shivamogga and adjoining Shikaripura ahead of the May 10 Karnataka assembly polls are a study in contrast. One an urban constituency and the latter a predominantly rural belt, the neighbouring assembly seats have been helmed by two of the biggest leaders of the saffron party. Shikaripura has remained a bastion of the tall Lingayat leader and former chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa, whereas the Shivamogga town has been held by senior leader K.S. Eshwarappa for years. Yet, their leaderships in their respective strongholds reflect two different dimensions of the state BJP unit and the internal tussle brewing in the saffron family. Both the leaders have also exited the electoral stage and will not be contesting in this year’s election.

Shikaripura, a sparsely-populated town surrounded by hills, shot into the limelight because of Yediyurappa – who held the assembly seat eight times since 1983. The town has a substantial Muslim population, many of whom show their allegiance to Yediyurappa and his family. “The Yediyurappa family has always been accessible to us, and has been of help for years,” says Imran Ali in Shikaripura town.

Although he had been a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh activist since his college, BSY cultivated the constituency by establishing patronage networks across all caste groups and communities. It is said that Yediyurappa enjoys the unflinching support of the Lingayats and Edigas (an OBC group) in the region, and has also been backed by a majority of Adivasis and Dalits. A considerable section of Muslims also has supported him and his family through the years.

“Yediyurappa and his family have brought prosperity to the region. As a chief minister too, Yediyurappa resolved some of the pressing problems of the region,” says an auto-driver of the Shikaripura town.

At his office, several BJP workers have been working nights to secure a handsome win for his younger son B.S. Vijayendra in the 2023 elections. After being forced to resign as the chief minister in 2021, Yediyurappa handed over the reins of Shikaripura to Vijayendra, while his elder son Raghavendra was elected to the Lok Sabha from Shimoga. Despite all attempts by the BJP’s high command to sideline him, Yediyurappa has still been able to exert his power because of the support he enjoys across the state, especially among the influential Lingayats.

Guruprasad, BJP’s booth president for the constituency, says that Yediyurappa doesn’t believe in polarising Hindus and Muslims. “For him, the only concern is development and people’s problems. Nothing else. His reputation will also ensure his son Vijayendra’s win. We expect our victory margin to be nothing less than 50,000 votes,” he says, echoing Yediyurappa’s recent statement that he believes that Hindus and Muslims should live like brothers and that he doesn’t agree with a few party leaders who constantly make anti-Muslim remarks.

“Without him (Yediyurappa), there is no BJP in the state,” Guruprasad asserts.

Although the former chief minister has not been in Shikaripura much, Vijayendra has followed his father’s template. Despite the shrill Hindutva campaign by the party’s top leadership, Vijayendra’s convoy almost always is accompanied by a few Muslim men and women. In fact, a few burqa-clad women with the BJP’s flag marched at the front for symbolic purposes, when Vijayendra filed his nomination for the forthcoming polls.

Women in burqas supporting Vijayendra’s nomination. Photo: By arrangement

Striking contrast

In striking contrast, Shivamogga town has been a centre of religious polarisation for many years. The BJP groomed the Kuruba community leader and former deputy chief minister K.S. Eshwarappa as the face of Hindutva. Known for his vitriolic remarks against Muslims, Eshwarappa recently made news when he declared that the BJP doesn’t need any Muslim votes to win elections.

Eshwarappa was elected multiple times as Shivamogga’s MLA since 1989, and was considered an integral part of the BJP’s Hindutva expansion plans in the state. His remarks have often increased volatility and created riot-like conditions in Shimoga, which has a substantial population of upwardly-mobile Muslims.

The serene surroundings of this prominent Malnad town are vitiated by the strong polarisation even in the 2023 campaign. Most Hindus, especially the youth, talk about their preference for the BJP, while Muslims speak similarly about either the Congress or the Janata Dal (Secular) [JD(S)].

“We will vote in the name of Modi,” says a Hindu shopkeeper who has been an avid supporter of Hindutva. For him, Hindutva trumps development issues as a voting concern.

Similarly, a Muslim shopkeeper says, “The BJP has crossed all limits in corruption and alienating the poor and minorities. There is no way BJP is coming to power this time.”

Both of them agreed that the otherwise sleepy town could turn into a conflict zone because of such religious polarisation at any moment, even as both worried about their security.

Also Read: ‘Karnataka Doesn’t Have a History of Violent Communalism. Which Is Why BJP Has a Tough Time Here’

Eshwarappa has been denied an election ticket in 2023. He had already fallen through the ranks after he was forced to resign when a government contractor, Santosh Patil, died by suicide in 2022 after alleging that Ehswarappa, then a cabinet minister in the Basavaraj Bommai government, asked for a 40% commission out of the total contract amount. The allegation earned the Bommai government the tag of “40% Sarkara”, and made corruption allegations against the BJP state government the primary poll plank of the opposition parties. The police registered a case against him, but later closed it due to lack of evidence.

Yet, Eshwarappa shot to fame again when Prime Minister Narendra Modi called him directly to praise him for being a loyal BJP worker and not rebelling against the party after being denied an election ticket. The stunt was seen as the BJP’s move to contain the increasing number of rebels in the election run-up, including top leaders like Jagadish Shettar and Laxman Savadi.

In 2022, Eswarappa and other BJP leaders of Shimoga undertook a violent funeral procession of a Bajrang Dal worker Harsha. They claimed that he was killed by Islamic fundamentalists, although a number of journalists reported that his murder may have been a result of personal rivalry with some people. BJP leaders like Eshwarappa, however, thought that it was a political murder. Despite the imposition of Section 144 in the town, the BJP leaders organised a massive funeral for Harsha, during which hundreds of Hindutva activists marched through the Muslim-dominated areas of the town. The activists damaged properties owned by Muslims.

A BJP campaign vehicle in Shivamogga. Photo: By arrangement

What the choice of Eshwarappa’s successor reveals

The communal heat since then has only been escalating. The BJP has replaced Eshwarappa with Channabasappa, a hardline Sangh parivar worker who is a little-known corporator in the city’s municipal council but whose only claim to fame is that he threatened to behead Congress leader Siddaramaiah if he “dared” to consume beef in Shimoga.

By choosing Channabasappa, the state BJP under B.L. Santosh and Pralhad Joshi has given a clear signal that party workers need to align themselves with the cause of Hindutva to rise through the ranks.

The new trend has been in the making for some years now but has taken a concrete shape with the party raising issues like hijab, halal, Muslim quota and other such polarising campaigns with active support from its national leadership.

The party’s turnaround has come amidst senior leaders exiting from the organisation and a series of internal tussles. Yet, the party had to call in Yediyurappa to steer the election campaign in the face of massive anti-incumbency. Yediyurappa is a leader who the BJP doesn’t like but can’t part its way with. He is credited for the growth of the BJP in Karnataka, when all other southern states kept an arm’s distance from it. However, he never quite fuelled Hindutva sentiments in the state but relied entirely on the social coalition of Lingayats, Valmikis (ST), and a section of Dalits to create a formidable support base for the BJP. As a chief minister, he gave huge grants to Lingayat mutts, and even Muslim institutions. His manoeuvres to patronise nodal organisations of caste groups in the state helped him emerge as one of the biggest leaders of the state.

He has had a difficult time ever since the Narendra Modi-led BJP foregrounded Hindutva as its most-important anchor, and empowered leaders with strong Hindutva roots. The reins of the party came under leaders like Santosh and Joshi and their coterie of hardline Hindutva leaders like Anant Kumar Hegde, Pratap Simha, C.T. Ravi, Tejasvi Surya. Although the top leadership didn’t want Vijayendra to contest, Yediyurappa still proved to be a hard bargainer because the BJP values victory more than anything else.

Observers say that BJP acted mostly like a Mandal party, stitching together tactical social coalitions to win elections. The Lingayat leadership has been replaced by Brahmins or leaders with a Brahmanical worldview. “Thus, Yediyurappa is sought to be replaced by Basanagouda Patil Yatnal, a Lingayat leader from Bijapur known for his anti-Muslim remarks. BJP’s Vokkaliga leaders like R. Ashok are being sidelined to prop up polarising Vokkaliga faces like C.T. Ravi,” a Bengaluru-based political analyst, who didn’t want to be named, says.

BJP’s internal tussles may or may not damage its electoral prospects, but its contrasting campaigns in Shivamogga and Shikaripura reflect the ideological churning in which the saffron party is currently burning.

Karnataka: BJP Government’s Law Prohibiting Cow Slaughter Hurts Both Hindus and Muslims

The economic devastation suffered by the people of Karnataka and their criticism of the law framed by the BJP is in equal measure a clear indication that the majoritarian agenda of the BJP is failing to mobilise people in its favour.

The collapse of cattle trade in Karnataka has added to the economic woes of farmers in the state after the BJP government enacted the Karnataka Prevention and Preservation of Cattle Act, 2020. It has spelt economic ruin to Hindus and Muslims alike. Hindus fear that their old and unproductive cows and oxen could never be bought by anyone. The Muslims who used to purchase such cattle are scared not just of the law, which prescribes stringent punishment to those engaged in cattle trade, but also of the cow vigilantes who – actuated by the Hindutva ideology – attack and even kill them.

It may be recalled that in Uttar Pradesh, the ban on cow slaughter was followed by the menace of stray cattle, which devastated crops. It became a huge electoral issue during the 2022 assembly elections but the BJP nevertheless won.

In Karnataka too, farmers and those engaged in cattle trade are helplessly confronting the collapse of their economies after the law banning cow slaughter came into force. People of diverse faiths engaged in farming and those earning their livelihood by engaging in cattle trade are very bitter against the BJP regime and its chief minister Basavaraj Bommai for their mounting economic woes.

Author Johnson T.A. observed in a recent article, “Across the cattle market, there is a consensus that the Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Act, 2020, introduced by the BJP government, has delivered a crippling blow to farmers by virtually criminalising the trade of cattle and creating an environment of fear.” Similar observations were made as early as February 2022.

In fact, even Karnataka’s finance department had earlier cautioned that there would be ‘huge financial implications’ for the State on account of that law.

In the aforementioned article by Johnson, he quotes a farmer, Somme Gowda, who said, “The entire cattle trade market has collapsed after the government introduced the law banning cattle slaughter in the state.” Gowda further added by saying, “There are no takers for cattle that used to go to slaughter houses. The Muslim traders have almost disappeared,”

Johnson quotes one Yunus, whose brother Pasha was killed by cow vigilantes. According to Yunus, “the Act had broken a social contract that existed between farmers of all communities and cattle traders. Do the people who allow all this not understand the reality on the ground? In the name of protection of Gau Mata, they are killing people and ruining the lives of farmers. The maximum sellers are from the majority community (Hindus). They want to sell cattle when they stop producing milk or fall ill. They bring the cattle to the market themselves or call middlemen. Now all that has collapsed.”

Swamy Gowda, a middleman in the cattle trade stated that in Karnataka, “many traditional cattle markets are shutting down. There are few merchants to buy cattle” and declared his preference to vote either Congress or JD(S) in the election scheduled to take place on May 10, 2023.

He refers to the Rs 6,000 paid to the accounts of farmers under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana and criticises it by saying that the cost of feed, and fertilisers is too high and they spend a minimum of Rs 60,000. He described Narendra Modi as a prime minister indulging in publicity and pushing polarising agenda. He then sharply observed, “There was only one [A.B.] Vajpayee. The present government is all about publicity. What is the cost of fuel, the cost of LPG under this government?… And, even Muslims are citizens of this country. Do they not eat the food of this earth? In this region, they are a part of our lives.”

The economic devastation suffered by the people of Karnataka, regardless of their faith, and their criticism of the law framed by the BJP regime to ban cow slaughter without consulting them is in equal measure a clear indication that the majoritarian agenda of the BJP is failing to mobilise people in its favour.

Basavaraj Bommai. Photo: Twitter/@BSBommai

Gandhi’s letter of 1927 to the Cow Protection Committee of Mysore

In the context of such developments taking place in Karnataka, one is reminded of a letter written by none other than Mahatma Gandhi to the Cow Protection Committee of Mysore on January 11, 1927. Almost a hundred years ago, what Gandhiji wrote assumes significance for the people of Karnataka. He stated, “In matters of religion I am against any State interference, and the cow question is in India a mixed matter of religion and economy.”

“I have no doubt that it is the concern of every State, whether Hindu or Mussalman, to conserve the cattle supply,” he asked, “…whether the State would be justified in interposing itself between Hindus and Mussalmans and regulating cow slaughter…”

Gandhi in spite of being a devout Hindu even went to the extent of saying, “In India which I consider to be as much the land of Hindus born in it as of Mussalmans, Christians and others born in it, even a Hindu State may not prohibit cow slaughter for purposes considered to be religious by any of its subjects without the consent of the intelligent majority of such subjects so long as such slaughter is conducted in private and without any intention of provoking or giving offence to Hindus.”

Was there the consent of – or even consultation with – the “intelligent majority” before the BJP government of Karnataka enacted the Prevention and Preservation of Cattle Act, 2020? Clearly, the aforementioned statements of Somme Gowda, Yunus and Swamy Gowda show that none was consulted and the law was imposed without following the lawmaking process of deliberation and consultation.

Gandhi very sensitively observed in his letter, “But in my opinion the economic side of the cow question, if it is properly handled, automatically provides for the delicate religious side.” The stark reality is that the economic part of the cow question has not been handled properly by political regimes, specifically BJP regimes. We are confronting a situation where people, be they Hindus or Muslims, are now facing severe economic consequences and their household economics is getting devastated.

Role of the state in dealing with cattle

Gandhi suggested measures which make eminent sense for 21st-century India in the context of farmers who are facing a bleak future owing to dwindling income from agriculture :

(1) The State should in the open market buy out every [head of] cattle offered for sale by outbidding every other buyer.
(2)The State should run dairies in all principal towns ensuring a cheap supply of milk.
(3) The State should run tanneries where the hides, bones, etc., of all dead cattle in its possession, should be utilised and should offer to buy again in the open market all privately-owned dead cattle.
(4) The State should keep model cattle farms and instruct the people in the art of breeding and keeping cattle

What we are witnessing now is state policy which causes misery to the farmers and those involved in the cattle trade. No wonder that they are up in arms against the BJP government in Karnataka. One has to wait and see how it would impact the electoral outcome.

Karnataka: ECI Files FIR Against BJP Candidate for Illegal Attempts to Induce Rival To Withdraw

The charge is that BJP’s candidate from Chamarajanagar, V. Somana, tried to offer inducements to the JD(S) candidate to step down. Offers included money and a ‘government vehicle’, according to the poll panel.

New Delhi: The Election Commission of India (ECI) said on Saturday, April 29, that it has taken “serious note” of a BJP candidate in the Karnataka assembly election who was trying to influence a Janata Dal (Secular) [JD(S)] candidate to withdraw by offering money and a government vehicle and filed a first information report (FIR).

The alleged attempts by V. Somanna, the BJP candidate from Chamarajanagar, to influence Mallikarjuna Swamy alias Alur Mallu, the JD(S) candidate, to withdraw were revealed in an audio clip that is circulating on social media.

According to the ECI, Somana offered “money and government vehicle” to the JDS candidate. “An FIR has been filed in the matter under Section 171E [bribery] and 171 F [Punishment for undue influence or personation at an election] of [the Indian Penal Code] in the Town Police Station, Chamarajanagar,” the poll panel said in a press release titled “ECI conveys no tolerance towards any attempt of bribery or intimidation to candidates and voters in the ongoing Karnataka elections 2023: CEOs and DEOs to keep strict vigil on social media for timely action.”

The commission has directed the chief electoral officer of Karnataka to ensure constant monitoring of the ground situation. “For conviction under Section 171E and 171 F of IPC, 1860, the election can be annulled on account of corrupt practices under section 123 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, and the candidate may be disqualified under section 8 (1) (a) of the R.P. Act, 1951,” the release goes on to say.

The assembly election in the state, which will be held on May 10, has been rife with complaints of attempts to subvert the level playing field. Data leakage and misuse concerns have been ongoing too for some time, which The Wire has reported on earlier. The sitting MLA of Karnataka’s Malleswaram assembly seat, C.N. Ashwath Narayan – also the BJP candidate for the constituency in the upcoming polls – has sent messages on WhatsApp to voters with excerpts from electors’ individual voter identity cards, leading to outrage.

As per a report in Deccan Herald, “A few residents (of the constituency) called it illegal and questioned how the MLA, who is also a cabinet minister (in the current Basavaraj Bommai government), could have access to voters’ mobile numbers.” According to the report, some voters have registered a complaint with the returning officer, accusing the MLA of illegally accessing his mobile number.

Karnataka: BJP Putting Hindutva on Backburner Is Proof of Electoral Significance of Lingayats

Over the past two decades, the community has leaned towards the saffron party but not because of an inclination to Hindutva. This is also reflected in the views of the community’s tallest leader, B.S. Yediyurappa.

Bengaluru: Congress leader Siddaramaiah’s recent remark on Karnataka chief minister Basavaraj Bommai’s alleged corrupt tenure and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s response to it is an apt instance of the strategic electoral significance that the Lingayats enjoy in Karnataka. Answering a question about the possibility of a Lingayat face as the next chief minister, the Congress veteran sought to dismiss caste affiliations of a political leader and said that the “root of all corruption in the state” is a “Lingayat CM” currently. The tactless remark was blown up by the saffron party as an affront to the entire Lingayat community, with the mainstream media playing it up dutifully.

Siddaramaiah quickly issued a rebuttal, alleging that the BJP “twisted and misinterpreted” his statement when all he did was comment on corruption scandals under Bommai. “There have been very honest Lingayat chief ministers. There was S. Nijalingappa, Virendra Patil and others for whom I have a lot of respect as they were very honest chief ministers,” he added.

Siddaramaiah and other Congress leaders at a rally in Belagavi district. Photo: Twitter/siddaramaiah

Although a few leaks of a caste count done during Siddarmaiah’s chief ministerial tenure indicated that the Lingayats accounted for not more than 12% of the state’s population, unofficial estimates have always pegged the community count as anywhere between 15-17%. However, the community has had a disproportionate share in power ever since Karnataka’s formation in 1956. The community has been represented by powerful leaders and chief ministers and has emerged as one of the most resourceful groups in Karnataka.

Given the fact that the community is particularly dominant in central and northwest Karnataka, it has held sway over almost 50% of the assembly constituencies in the state. As a result, Lingayat leaders are also numerically the strongest in the assembly. Over the last few decades, the community has backed the BJP wholeheartedly under the leadership of B.S. Yediyurappa and has emerged as the single most important reason for the BJP’s expansion in the state.

Also Read | Karnataka: For Both BJP and Congress, Lingayat Voters Hold Serious Significance

Understanding Lingayat support to BJP

However, the community has leaned towards the saffron party, not because of an inclination to Hindutva. Lingayat leaders see the BJP as an alternative to the Congress, which they think hasn’t given the community its due representation and respect.

Congress, which has had stalwart leaders like S. Nijalingappa, Veerendra Patil and others who were Lingayats, has had a love-hate relationship with the community. The 1969 split in the Congress that led to the formation of the Congress (Organisation) or the Syndicate was steered by Congress veteran Nijalingappa, a Lingayat leader from Karnataka. To counter his hold in Karnataka, D. Devaraj Urs of the Indira Gandhi-led Congress (Requisitionists) chalked out a new electoral combination that later came to be known as the Ahinda – a Kannada acronym for backward classes, Dalits, and minorities.

The coming together of these groups challenged the caste hegemony of dominant and ‘upper’ caste groups and devised a larger social justice narrative for the Congress. Urs went on to become the state’s chief minister twice, while Nijalingappa faded into political oblivion. The course of events distanced the Lingayats from the Congress for the first time.

The Congress attempted to make up for its losses by nominating Lingayat leaders like S. Bommai and Veerendra Patil and Ramakrishna Hegde, who although a Brahmin enjoyed considerable popularity among Lingayats, as chief ministers in the subsequent years.

But the real rift between the Lingayats and the Congress came in 1989, when Patil was unceremoniously removed from the chief minister’s office by the then Rajiv Gandhi-led government at the Centre within one year of his tenure. Patil had got his second term as the chief minister, 18 years after he served in the same office from 1968 to 1971. Rajiv is said to have announced from the Bangalore airport that the state will get a new chief minister without even informing Patil. The latter was in the middle of a controversy over the imposition of prohibition in the state. The Congress high command soon replaced him, after a brief period of President’s Rule, with S. Bangarappa who belonged to the Ediga community, who are traditionallly toddy-tappers.

The Congress high command’s move was seen as an insult and humiliation by the Lingayat community. Since then, a majority of the community has looked outside the Congress to seek representation. In the early 1990s, the community backed the Janata Dal. Following its split into Janata Dal (Secular) and Janata Dal (United), the community chose the latter as it was led by Ramakrishna Hegde and the Lingayat leader J.H. Patel. The latter became the chief minister of Karnataka while Hegde joined the A.B. Vajpayee government as the Union commerce minister in 1998-99.

Also Read: What is Lingayata? A Brief Look Into the Evolution of a Term Favoured by Media But Grasped by Few

The Lingayats’ real relationship with the BJP began during the late 1990s, when the saffron party was in an alliance with the JD(U). When Patel died in 2000 and Hegde passed on in 2004, the leadership vacuum within the Lingayat community was filled by none other than BJP leader Yediyurappa. Since then, the community has backed Yediyurappa, and by default the BJP.

BS Yediyurappa at a Vijay Sankalp Yatra of the BJP. Photo: Twitter/@BSYBJP

A double-edged sword?

Yediyurappa has proven to be a double-edged sword for the BJP. While he is the primary factor behind the saffron party’s expansion across Karnataka, he has also been the sole reason that the Hindutva hasn’t had greater appeal among Kannadigas. Cast in the socialist mould, Yediyurappa has always kept an arm’s distance from any kind of Hindu nationalist politics, choosing to be seen as a welfarist and social justice-driven political leader. Such political posturing has helped him have a wider appeal among a range of communities with conflicting interests, even though he is perceived as a Lingayat leader first. His recent statement that he did not believe in communal politics and would rather have Hindus and Muslims living like brothers is a case in point.

Things changed for him with the Narendra Modi-led BJP coming to power at the Centre. With its aggressive push towards Hindu nationalist politics, Yediyurappa was becoming a thorn in its side. In order to curtail his influence in the Karnataka BJP, the Modi-led BJP appointed B.L. Santosh and Prahlad Joshi to rejig the party. The duo pushed hardline Hindutva and empowered leaders like C.T Ravi, Nalin Kumar Kateel, Anant Kumar Hegde, and Tejasvi Surya, much to the dislike of Yediyurappa and even incumbent chief minister Bommai, who too was trained in Yediyurappa’s ways.

The controversies over hijab, halal and the spread of Hindu-Muslim clashes outside coastal Karnataka, where Hindutva issues have had a historical presence, were attempts by the newly-empowered group led by Santosh to oust the old guard and take control of the party. Bommai’s last-minute attempt to remove the 4% Muslim quota only indicates that the Santosh-led group has become truly powerful within the party.

B.L. Santosh. Photo: Twitter/@blsanthosh

However, despite multiple attempts to sideline Yediyurappa by removing him as the chief minister or playing down his role, such is his influence over the Lingayat community – the core of the saffron party’s vote base – that the BJP has been forced to present him as the top leader whenever elections are around the corner. When he was brought back to steer the campaign in January again in the run-up to the 2023 assembly elections, the move hardly came as a surprise. This move also shows that Lingayats are swayed more by the politics of representation than Hindutva of any form.

The decision to put Yediyurappa at the top is forced but electorally sound. In 2012, when Yediyurappa exited from the party out of anguish against a similar attempt to sideline him and formed his own Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP), the BJP was washed out, finishing with a mere 40 seats while the Congress secured a majority with 122 seats. The KJP won only six seats but got nearly 10% of the vote, which most likely came from the BJP’s traditional voter base comprising the Lingayats. The same election also saw BJP’s B. Sriramulu forming the Badavara Shramikara Raitara Congress (BRSC), which weaned away nearly 3% votes from the BJP’s bag and got four seats. Sriramulu is the most popular leader of the Nayakas, a Scheduled Tribe community that has been supporting the BJP over the past two decades.

The importance of caste and community alliances

The BJP has clearly understood the significance of pre-electoral caste and community alliances to remain in contention since then. The exit of high-profile Lingayat leaders Jagdish Shettar and Laxman Savadi, who blamed Santosh and his acolytes for humiliating senior leaders, has only made the BJP more anxious. The sidelining of Yediyurappa first, and his son B.Y. Vijayendra getting a ticket after a considerable struggle with Santosh’s group, and now the exit of Shettar and Savadi doesn’t make for good optics for the BJP, especially among the Lingayats.

Against such a backdrop, the Congress is depending heavily on weakening the Lingayat support for the BJP to increase its strike rate in central and northwest Karnataka. Its vote share has consistently been more than the BJP’s but that doesn’t translate into a greater number of seats for the grand old party. The Lingayat support in dense pockets of the state has delivered the BJP’s electoral victories in the past, although the party has negligible influence in south Karnataka where the contest is primarily between the H.D. Deve Gowda-led Janata Dal (Secular) and the Congress.

Precisely because of such factors, the BJP has almost abandoned its Hindutva issues for the moment and gone back to the safety net of the age-old caste and community-driven politics. In a series of interviews, Bommai has categorically been saying that hijab and halal issues are of no material in the upcoming elections. At the same time, Union home minister Amit Shah has been reminding the audience in his rallies that the BJP has replaced old Lingayat leaders with new faces from the Lingayat community itself, and not from any other caste group.

The organised attack by the BJP on Siddaramaiah’s remark is a clear reflection of such tactical posturing. The former Congress chief minister’s remark has also given a window to the BJP for raking up the Congress’s past mistakes while dealing with the Lingayats. In this pitched battle between political parties, however, the politics of social representation has clearly trumped the Hindutva pitch that the Santosh camp in the saffron party tried to advance with great belligerence.

Karnataka: Survey Says a Massive Anti-Incumbency Wave Threatens To Overturn BJP’s Boat

More than half of nearly 40,000 persons surveyed by Karnataka outfit Eedina said the Bommai government should not be given another chance. A perception of a corrupt regime dogs the government that came to power after toppling the Congress-JD(S) government with the help of controversial defections.

New Delhi: A pre-poll survey conducted by the Kannada outlet Eedina finds there is a massive anti-incumbency wave in Karnataka against the BJP government led by Basavaraj Bommai, which is fuelled by the belief that it is the most corrupt government in the past decade.

As part of the poll, respondents were asked if they felt the Bommai government should get another chance. While 32% of the overall respondents did not have an opinion or chose not to answer, those who did were overwhelmingly of the opinion that the BJP should not come back to power.

Eedina said among those who answered with ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ to this question, “67% of voters said [the] Basavaraj Bommai government should not be given another chance”.

The southern state will vote on May 10 to elect members to its 224-member assembly. The results will be declared on May 13.

Eedina said that it has surveyed 183 constituencies, with 28 more constituencies to be surveyed. Nearly 40,000 people, chosen from various communities to be representative of the state’s population, were chosen for the survey, it says. In every constituency, people from 16 booths chosen randomly were surveyed, it added. 55% of the respondents were male and 45% were female.

According to the survey, more than a quarter (27%) of BJP supporters also answered in the negative when asked if Bommai should be given another chance to govern. As expected, most Congress and Janata Dal (Secular) [JD(S)] supporters were opposed to the BJP’s re-election: 87% of Congress supporters and 88% of JD(S) supporters held this belief.

Eedina also provided caste and community-wise responses, which showed that upper caste Hindus (Brahmins, Vaisyas, etc) were one of only two communities in favour of the current government. The survey said that 57% of upper castes wanted the BJP to be re-elected. Lingayats were the other community in favour of the BJP, with 53% saying they want the Bommai government to get re-elected.

Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Muslims, Vokkaligas and Kurubas have largely expressed their opinion against the continuation of this government, Eedina said.

Source: eedina.com

Note:This survey does not include details of the interviews conducted in Bengaluru. As the survey is still being conducted in the city, details of the rest of Karnataka are given here.

Bommai image takes hit on corruption, competence

Respondents were also asked which government they thought was the most corrupt since 2013. Though only two elections were held in this period, there have been four chief ministers.

Congress leader Siddaramaiah saw out his five-year term between 2013 and 2018. After the May 2018 elections delivered a hung assembly, H.D. Kumaraswamy of the Janata Dal (Secular) became chief minister in a coalition with the Congress. But the coalition was toppled in June 2019 after nearly 20 MLAs from the Congress and JD(S) defected to the BJP and B.S. Yediyurappa became the chief minister. The Lingayat strongman was sidelined by the BJP and incumbent chief minister Basavaraj Bommai was installed in his place in July 2021.

In the Eedina poll, respondents were asked, “According to you, which of the recent governments is the most corrupt?” and could choose from the four cabinets mentioned above. “Among those who answered this question, 36% of voters said the Bommai government is the most corrupt,” Eedina said. Additionally, 14% of the voters said the government led by Yediyurappa was the most corrupt – meaning one in two persons who answered felt governments led by the BJP were the most corrupt.

Meanwhile, 13% said Siddaramaiah’s government was the most corrupt and 8% felt that way about Kumaraswami. The remaining 29% of respondents chose between “all are corrupt” or “no one is corrupt”.

According to Eedina, 20% of the people who said that the Bommai government is the most corrupt were BJP supporters.

The survey also reported that most of the people who answered the question, ‘Who according to you is the most incompetent chief minister in the history of Karnataka?’ chose Bommai as the answer. Respondents were given the choice to express their opinion, and could not choose from preset options, according to Eedina.

“As an indication of the anger against the Basavaraj Bommai government, a large number of people named [him] as the most incompetent chief minister in the history of Karnataka,” the survey says.

Of the total respondents, only 55% chose to answer this question. But among those who did, 45% said Bommai was the “most incompetent” chief minister.

What other pre-poll surveys say

Meanwhile, Deccan Herald reported that five pre-poll voter surveys – conducted by TV9 and C-Voter, Public TV’s Mood of Karnataka, Asianet Survarna News Jan Ki Baat, Vistara News and The South First People’s Pulse – all indicate the possibility of a hung verdict. The findings of these pre-poll surveys were announced at different points over the past one month, the newspaper said.

Two of them indicate that the Congress has an edge over the BJP. The JD(S) could once again play the role of the kingmaker.

The newspaper said that TV9 and C-Voter’s survey shows that the Congress could win 106-116 seats out of 224, while the BJP would end up 79-89 range. The JD(S) could bag 24-34 seats. In the best case scenario predicted for the Congress, it will sneak past the halfway mark.

Public TV’s Mood of Karnataka said that the Congress could get 98-108 seats, which will put it below simple majority of 113. The could win BJP 85-95 seats and JD(S) 28-33.

Meanwhile, Asianet Survarna News Jan Ki Baat survey said the saffron party could win 98-109 seats, followed by the Congress with 89-97 and JD(S) with 25-29.

Vistara News predicted that both the BJP and Congress will win around 90 seats. The BJP’s range was 88-93 BJP, while Congress’s was 84-90 and JD(S) could bag 23-26 seats, it said. According to Deccan Herald, the survey said the outcome is “difficult to call in 27-30 seats”.

The South First People’s Pulse pre-poll survey said the Congress is predicted to win between 95-105 seats, with the BJP not fat behind with90-100. The JD(S) could win 25-30 seats, it said.

Note: The Wire will report on part 2 of Eedina’s survey tomorrow, April 26.