Tagduru (Varuna, Mysuru, Karnataka), April 26 It may be his pocket-borough but the Congress’s strongest contender to be Chief Minister in the event of a victory in the ongoing Karnataka Assembly polls, Siddaramiah, is taking no chances. “I am going to win. Hundred per cent,” he told BusinessLine as he prepared to hit a road show in Tagduru, a small hamlet where a large crowd had thronged to cheer him as his cavalcade passed by.
Whether he becomes CM is, of course, as he said, a “matter for the high command to decide”. But what he is certain of is that the BJP’s campaign has not taken off in Karnataka. “All their issues have failed. This false Hindu-Muslim divide, raking up false historical narratives, nothing has worked for them,” he said. The Congress, he said, is going to make a government on his own.
To contest against BJP’s Somanna
BJP has pitted a strong candidate, Housing Minister V. Somanna, in Varuna to confine Siddaramiah to his constituency. Somanna is a Lingayat, a formidable caste with an approximate 53,000 of the total 2,33,003 voters in Varuna. There are, of course, 27,000 Kurubas, Siddaramiah’s own community voters, over 15,000 Muslims, 48,000 Dalits, 23,000 Nykas (OBCs) among major caste groups in this high-profile constituency. It is a constituency previously held by Siddaramiah’s son Yathindra who had defeated the BJP candidate T. Basavaraju in the 2018 Assembly polls by a margin of 58,616 votes. This time, Yathindra has vacated the seat for his father who towers over all others in the Congress in terms of mass appeal and popular connect.
But Siddaramiah brushes aside questions about CM contenders in the Congress. The main thing, he said, is to win and the Congress is better poised than all others. “We are getting a majority on our own,” he said.
Infighting in Congress
The BJP has a strong alternative pitch. It believes that the infighting in the Congress, especially the feud between the two top leaders – Siddaramiah and D. K. Shivkumar – has left the Congress in two camps besides being in an overall dispirited space. “Give me two good reasons why people should vote for the Congress,” asked Rajiv Chandrashekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology. The ruling party has mounted a strong campaign, with all the central leaders camping in each of the 224 constituencies for two days and Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself arriving to campaign in the state from April 28. “The Congress is in a weak state. They do not have the last-mile connectivity,” said a BJP leader.
However, according to economist Narendra Pani, the noteworthy fact is that the BJP has never got a majority on its own in Karnataka. “They managed 104 seats last time (in 2018 Assembly elections). This time, the issues of Hijab/Halaal et al have not found much traction. The Amul-Nandini issue backfire on them and to top it, the Lingayats are restive. They (the BJP) should not pin much hope on this election,” Pani said.
Congress insiders say the party has not done too well in ticket distribution although the dissensions in the Congress camp are not as pronounced as they are in the BJP. “We have somehow managed to stay intact. By now, I would have expected the front two wheels of our wagon (reference to Siddaramiah and D. K. Shivkumar) to have pulled apart. But they seem to be chugging along. We should have done better with seat distribution. In Bengaluru, for instance, of the 28 seats, we should have got at least 18-19 seats but for our mess ups. Still, I should hope we are getting at least 15 seats here. There are issues, of course. But we seem to be doing well overall,” a top Congress leader told BusinessLine.