Bengaluru: In September 2021, the Bharatiya Janata Party recorded a thumping victory in the Belagavi City Corporation elections, winning 35 of the body’s 58 seats.
The victory, which came less than two months after Basavaraj Bommai took over as chief minister of the state, was a shot in the arm for the BJP, especially given the place that Belagavi, and the Kittur-Karnataka region, holds in Karnataka’s politics.
The BJP hailed it as the ‘heralding’ of a new order.
“This was almost like a sample test of electoral performance after one month of my taking over the office of the chief minister,” Bommai had told the media at that time despite the fact that his party had lost elections in Hubballi-Dharwad by just three seats.
Two years later, however, Kittur-Karnataka — a region made up of Belagavi, Hubballi-Dharwad, Bagalkote, Vijayapura, Gadag and Haveri — could prove to be the BJP’s achilles’ heel.
Not only is the party fighting the twin challenges of infighting and anti-incumbency in the region, but there are now other problems — chief among them the loss of two Lingayat heavyweights, Laxman Savadi and Jagadish Shettar, to the Congress.
“Savadi can influence 11-15 seats,” one highly-placed source in the Congress who didn’t want to be named told ThePrint, adding that in case of Shettar too, “it was self-inflicted suicide”.
The BJP, however, maintains that their leaving would not affect the party.
“No matter who leaves the party, there will be no damage to us,” Bommai told reporters after they joined the Congress. “The party has the strength to make changes and digest them. We know the plight of those who left our party for another and their state today. One day even these leaders will repent.”
On his part, former chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa, the BJP’s tallest Lingayat leader, said that the people of the state won’t forgive them.
“The whole party is unhappy regarding the decision of two senior most leaders in the state. The people of Karnataka will not forgive them and teach them a lesson in the elections. I will visit the areas of these leaders and explain to the people about their betrayal. It is unfortunate,” he told reporters.
Why Kittur-Karnataka is important
Formerly known as the Mumbai-Karnataka region, the Kittur-Karnataka region is the northernmost part of the state that shares a border with Maharashtra. Apart from the six districts mentioned above, some parts of Uttara Kannada, such as Karwar, Yellapur, Khanapur and Haliyal, are sometimes counted as being part of the Kittur-Karnataka region.
Home to many strong Lingayat leaders, including Yediyurrapa and Bommai, Kittur-Karnataka is politically significant due to the community’s dominant presence.
In 2021, the Bommai government renamed the region Kittur-Karnataka from Mumbai Karnataka in an attempt to cast off all residual references to its history of being part of the Bombay presidency before the reorganisation of states in 1956.
Today, Kittur-Karnataka sends up to 50 MLAs to the 224-member house and is considered a BJP stronghold — in the 2018 assembly elections, the BJP won 30 seats here.
However, despite being a Lingayat stronghold, the region continues to share close cultural ties with Maharashtra and has a significant Marathi-speaking population.
The Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti (MES), a regional political party, has been spearheading a campaign to merge the region’s dominant Marathi-speaking areas with Maharashtra — a sore point for Karnataka.
Although the organisation has steadily lost clout to parties like the BJP and the Congress, fissures between the two linguistic groups continue to remain, allowing outfits like Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) to contest elections in these parts and keep the issue alive.
As a result of its close cultural ties with Maharashtra, the region is a frequent witness to border disputes and flare-ups, the latest one being in December last year.
It’s this political dichotomy that could continue to be a challenge to the BJP. On its part, the party has been trying to unite Marathas and Lingayats under the larger umbrella of Hindu and Hindutva, political observers from the region told ThePrint.
Congress wooing Lingayats
But despite BJP’s attempts to retain its hold on the region, challenges continue. For instance, the party nearly lost Belagavi to the Congress in the 2021 Lok Sabha by-polls — its candidate Mangala Angadi beat Congress’s Satish Jarkiholi by a slim margin of just over 5,000 votes.
These problems could be exacerbated by the loss of Savadi and Shettar, Congress leaders say.
Savadi joined the Congress on 14 April. Four days later, Shettar joined him.
Both were leaders in their own right and were considered close to state as well as central leaders. While Shettar served as chief minister between 2012 and 2013, Savadi was deputy chief minister between 2019 and 2021.
While the Congress is fielding Savadi from Athani, where he will face BJP’s sitting MLA Mahesh Kumathalli, Shettar will contest the election from Hubballi-Dharwad Central.
The BJP, which is pushing for a second term in office — something no party has managed to do in the state since the 1980s — has maintained that this development will not affect its prospects.
“The BJP has grown on the backs of workers and people and has the strength to deal with such issues. We are doing all we can to further strengthen our hold on the northern, southern and other parts of the state,” Bommai told reporters last Monday, referring to Shettar’s exit.
A section of the Congress also agrees, saying that while Shettar is a big leader in the region, his influence is not as wide as Savadi.
“Shettar’s exit has rattled the BJP but there’s no real bearing on the ground,” one Congress legislator who didn’t want to be named told ThePrint.
Still, both leaders could prove to be assets for the Congress, which has been trying to woo Lingayats. The party tried to accommodate more Lingayats leaders from this region, fielding 51 candidates for this election. It has also made M.B Patil, another Lingayat leader, chairman of its campaign committee, appointed Eshwar Khandre as its working president and has given a ticket to 91-year-old Lingayat leader Shamanur Shivashankarappa.
“Congress has also understood the importance of the Lingayats. Now, the party is totally convinced that Lingayats will vote for us and we should give them due representation,” Patil told The Print in an earlier interview.
Political fiefdoms
The land of the Lingayats is also home to some very influential political families, chief among them the Jarkiholis, the Kattis and the Jolles.
Arguably, the most influential of these is the Jarikholis, a family of sugar barons that has an iron grip over Belagavi and the surrounding areas.
The Jarkholi brothers are known to put their interest before their party’s — in fact, it was pushback from them against D.K. Shivakumar’s alleged interference in the functioning of Belagavi district that’s frequently cited as being the reason for the collapse of the HD Kumaraswamy-led Janata Dal (Secular)-Congress government in 2019.
While Ramesh, a former minister in the Yediyurappa cabinet, and his brother Balachandra Jarkiholi are BJP legislators, Satish is the working president of the Karnataka Congress and is counted among its tallest leaders.
In December 2021, when the last brother, Lakhan Jarkiholi, stood for elections in the state’s upper house, Vidhana Parishad, as an independent candidate, Ramesh openly supported him against the BJP’s official candidate, Mahantesh Kavatagimath.
It was also his interference in ticket distribution that led to Savadi quitting the BJP — he warned the party in March that he would not contest the election unless his aide, sitting Athani MLA Mahesh Kumatahalli, was fielded from the seat.
There are also other influential political families in the region. The BJP has fielded Nikhil Katti, son of late cabinet minister Umesh Katti, from Hukkeri constituency. His father, eight-time Hukkeri legislator Umesh Katti, who died of cardiac arrest in September last year, entered politics in 1985 after the death of his father Vishwanath Katti, a Janata Dal legislator.
Also from the region is Shashikala Jolle, the wife of Annasaheb Shankar Jolle, the incumbent BJP Member of Parliament from Chikkodi. A minister in the Bommai government and sitting MLA from Nippani constituency, Jolle, who was booked last month for violating the model code of conduct, is being fielded from the seat yet again.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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