As election dates have been announced for Karnataka, one of the most keenly watched contests, for the BJP, the challenge is not just to retain the lone southern State in its kitty, but to look at a broadbasing of its support base beyond just the former Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa’s Lingayat appeal.
The announcement by the Basavaraj Bommai government to remove 4% reservations to Muslims and divide them among the Veerashaiva Lingayat sect and the Vokkaliga community is not just about attempts to polarise the vote on religious lines, but more a pointer on where the BJP has staked its wooing capacity.
While Veerashaiva Lingayats are a traditional vote bank for the BJP, the Vokkaliga community has voted for either the Congress or the Janata Dal (S) and the Old Mysore area has long remained out of the reach of the BJP. In the Lok Sabha, the situation is different as national issues, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pan-State appeal works for the BJP.
The appointment of Union Minister Shobha Karandlaje, a Vokkaliga, as the chief of the election management committee for the BJP for these polls is also an indicator that the BJP wants to, while retaining Lingayat support, also reach out to Vokkaligas.
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The big mystery for a while has been why, with Mr. Yediyurappa being such a big leader among Lingayats, without whom a BJP victory is impossible, was he removed as Chief Minister and later wooed back as a member of the BJP’s parliamentary board?
According to a senior leader of the BJP involved in Karnataka, the close identification between Mr. Yediyurappa and the Lingayat community was itself an issue for the BJP, which wanted the vote for the organisation, party and ideology, and not just accrue to an individual leader. “After he [Mr. Yediyurappa] quit, it was soon very clear that he still commanded the support of the Lingayat community, and whatever happened in 2013 [when Mr. Yediyurappa floated his own outfit, the Karnataka Janatha Paksha, reducing the BJP to third position] was front and centre,” said the leader.
Keep in good humour
The effort since then is to keep Mr. Yediyurappa in good humour but to also broadbase the party. In coastal Karnataka, the appeal of Hindutva works for the BJP, but elsewhere, the accumulation of support from communities across the spectrum is important.
These Assembly elections will not see Mr. Yediyurappa directly in the fray, and for the BJP, the real question of these elections will be whether or not the Lingayat vote will come to the party, sans a chief ministerial aspirant in Mr. Yediyurappa, and whether any ingress could be made into other communities, liberating the party from the dominance of a single caste base.
