The three major political parties in Karnataka are in the grip of election fever with byelections scheduled for three Legislative Assembly constituencies — Bidar, Deodurg, and Hebbal — on February 13, and intra-party politics has come to the fore in the process of finalising the list of candidates.
Of the three seats, Bidar and Hebbal were with the Bharatiya Janata Party, while Deodurg was with the Congress. It is another matter that the three seats have never been with any given party for several terms at a stretch. Incidentally, political parties are confused over the choice of candidates given the fact that the three seats fell vacant following the death of its elected representatives — Hebbal MLA R. Jagadish Kumar and Bidar MLA Gurupadappa Nagamarapalli (both from the BJP), who died of cardiac arrest, and Deodurg Congress MLA Venkatesh Naik, who died in a railway accident. And what will again be brought to the fore is the popularity of the Congress and, in particular, that of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who has been heading the government since May 2013 after the party was swept to power in the elections to the Legislative Assembly. Unlike what the BJP enjoyed in successive byelections during the B.S. Yeddyurappa government, the performance of the Congress in the various elections held over the past two years has not been noteworthy of serious attention.
Informed sources in the Congress told
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The BJP is playing the game with its cards close to its chest, more so with reference to the Hebbal and Bidar seats, which it has to retain. The party is keen on fielding the next of kin of the deceased to ensure that it stands to gain by virtue of sympathy votes. Same is the case with the Congress, which is keen on fielding the wife or the younger son of Venkatesh Naik for the Deodurg seat. For the Janata Dal (Secular), it is another ball game since an outside victory will help it gain in strength.
It may be an uphill task for the Congress to gain the Hebbal seat unless the party leaders have a consensus over the choice of candidate, and towards this end, the two top State leaders — M. Mallikarjun Kharge and Mr. Siddaramaiah — have to sit together. The Chief Minister is stated to be keen on fielding Byrathi Suresh, a realtor, and Mr. Kharge is against him after it was established by a Congress committee that he had worked against the party’s official candidate, Iqbal Ahmed Saradgi in the 2012 elections to the Legislative Council.
The view in the Bangalore city Congress is that the candidate for the Hebbal seat should be a Muslim since nearly a third of the electorate in the constituency are Muslims. In all certainty, the selection process has brought to the fore the serious differences among the Congress leaders largely borne out of personal interests.
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(The writer is Resident Representative, The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy, Bengaluru)