The reported tussle between Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa and the party leadership on various administrative and organisational issues appears to have taken a caste twist ever since the former remarked that “he was walking a tight rope.”
The political rhetoric seems to have changed the course for him since then, with some leaders from the dominant community of Lingayats, to which Mr. Yediyurappa belongs, either publicly endorsing his work or not hesitating to take on his political adversaries. In the latest episode, even a routine action of a few workers in the party office being replaced on Sunday, took this colour with one of them accusing the leadership’s move as “anti-Lingayat”.
Party insiders said such developments have become a cause of concern for the party leadership as it does not want to antagonise its political base of Lingayat community in the State. “This has turned out to be tricky for the BJP leadership as it has to ensure that Mr. Yediyurappa follows its diktats without losing the support of the community,” a party insider observed.
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Mr. Yediyurappa, whose supporters allege that he has not been given a free hand by the party leadership in his present stint as Chief Minister, had made the remarks of walking a tight rope at a programme in the presence of leaders and seers of the Lingayat community in Davangere.
These remarks had come soon after several seers of the community rallied behind him and threatened to resist any efforts by the party to destabilise him, at another programme in Kalaburagi to mark the renaming of Hyderabad Karnataka as Kalyana Karnataka.
The party leadership was peeved when Lingayat leader and former Union Minister Basanagouda Patil Yatnal, who was once Mr. Yediyurappa’s bête noire, attacked the Centre over the delay in releasing flood aid and accused it of not giving a free hand to the Chief Minister. This had resulted in the party serving a show-cause notice to him.
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Controversy
The Sunday’s episode of the party leadership relieving some of its lower order staff from duty at the State headquarters too triggered a controversy with one of the persons, who lost the job, taking to social media and alleging that this was a move against the community and Mr. Yediyurappa.
“It is a normal recruitment, which happens periodically and the issue of community of the staff should not be linked to this,” said State general secretary of BJP Mahesh Tenginakai.