Was it a master stroke on the part of the detractors of former chief minister BS Yeddyurappa to allow him to re-enter the Bharatiya Janata Party, but leave out those who stood by him?
Even though the BJP rewarded the senior leader with a party ticket to contest from his constituency, Shimoga, and also his confidante, Shobha Karandlaje, who has been given a ticket for the Udupi-Chickmagalur constituency, Yeddyurappa has been left without his close aides who would have allowed him enough space to actively campaign for fellow candidates in other constituencies.
If these candidates had won the elections, his image in the eyes of the party high command would have gone up again, something a few BJP leaders are totally against. It is not that Yeddyurappa is not campaigning in other constituencies — it is not as actively as he would have liked to, according to some of the BJP leaders.
What has helped him is the fact that his rivals are political lightweights — Geetha Shivrajkumar, the daughter-in-law of Kannada film industry icon, the late Rajkumar of the JD-S, and a relatively lesser known Congress candidate, Manjunath Bhandary, who is known to be close to Oscar Fernandes.
Bhandary won the nomination after a stiff fight put up by Shivrajkumar’s brother, Kumar Bangarappa, son of late former chief minister, S Bangarappa. Congress did not see any merit in the argument that a fight between siblings would have led to at least one of them winning the elections. The party felt that such a fight would have in fact made it much easier for Yedduyrappa to win the contest. Hence, Bhandary got the nod ahead of Bangarappa.
Though some of the BJP leaders believe that they have been able to checkmate Yeddyurappa, his absence during the last year’s assembly elections led the party to lose out to the Congress.
This had forced the BJP to take him back, but it would have certainly helped if all his supporters too had been accommodated in the party.
A prominent Lingayat leader, Yeddyurappa commands good influence in old Mysore, coastal Karnataka and in the Hyderabad-Karnataka region in the north-eastern parts of the State. He single-handedly won six seats for his former party, the Karnataka Janata Party, during last year’s Assembly elections and got 10 per cent of the total votes polled, a huge swing in favour of a first-time party.
The BJP’s decision to leave out the other prominent leaders of the KJP such as former Union Minister Dhananjay Kumar has had its effect. Kumar has decided to contest against Karandlaje, while another aide, Ashwathanarayana, has joined the Congress with his supporters. This could prove costly for the BJP in the Tumkur-Chitradurga region in south-central Karnataka.
Yeddyurappa might still win his seat from Shimoga largely because he has nursed the constituency well. But what remains to be seen is whether the BJP will be able to win as many seats it wants to by pinning the Lingayat leader down.