Bengaluru/Mandya/Mysuru: In the 1975 film Sholay, dacoit Gabbar had killed Rahim chacha’s son while he was going from his village, Ramgarh, into town to look for a job. Forty-seven years since this movie, the real-life village in Ramanagara where it was shot comes as a reminder of reel-life Ramgarh when it comes to poverty. Go near the rocks of the Ramagiri hills and one can almost hear Hema Malini’s character Basanti singing ‘Jab tak hai jaan…main nachungi’.
Most of the villagers here belong to the Scheduled Tribes (ST). Anil Kumar, a young man, says that all that they get in terms of welfare schemes is 4 kg foodgrains as monthly ration.
There are two Lingayat families in the village. Shakuntala and Shivaswamy have no complaints against the government, even though they have to depend on water tankers. The big water tank from the top of which Veeru (Dharmendra) threatened “suicide” is nowhere to be seen.
They are happy to inform us that they vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It doesn’t matter to them why B.S. Yediyurappa was replaced by Basavaraj Bommai as the chief minister. Bommai is a Lingayat too, Shakuntala tells ThePrint smilingly.
The couple have a reason to thank the government — a small road connecting their house with the main road and a wall shielding the house from overhanging rocks.
Pointing to ST households, she says they vote for the Congress “for reasons only they know”.
About 100 km west of Bengaluru, sitting near the entrance of Adichunchanagiri Math, four men in panches and shirts get agitated when asked about Sumalatha Ambareesh, an actress and the sitting Member of Parliament from Mandya, where the math is located.
“It was a mistake,” says one of them about having elected the independent MP, who had, in the 2019 General Election, defeated Nikhil Kumaraswamy, the grandson of former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda and son of former chief minister H.D Kumaraswamy. While the BJP had extended support to her, many Congress leaders had also indirectly helped her.
In March, Sumalatha vowed support to the BJP. But these four men from the Vokkaliga community predict Kumaraswamy’s return as the CM.
They wouldn’t admit that they vote for the Gowdas because they are Vokkaliga. “They are pro-farmer, that’s why,” quipped one, when asked why they voted for them.
Travel around Karnataka — in southern parts, at least, where ThePrint visited three districts — and election discourse seems to be centred around castes, with other issues virtually remaining dormant, if at all. There’s no talk of Hindutva, governance or the lack of it, or corruption.
The last four elections show the three major players — the BJP, the Congress and the JD(S) — have more or less retained their support base. The vote shares of the Congress in the last four elections were: 38 per cent (2018), 36 per cent (2013), 35 per cent (2008) and 35 per cent (2004).
The BJP’s vote shares in these elections were: 36 per cent (2018), 20 per cent (2013, when BS Yediyurappa quit the BJP and his party took away 10 per cent of the vote), 34 per cent (2008) and 28 per cent (2004). For the JD(S), the figures stood at 18 per cent, 20 per cent, 19 per cent and 21 per cent.
In the absence of any major emotive issues and unless there is a major chink in the BJP’s Lingayat votebank, indications from the Gowda land are likely to keep all parties on tenterhooks. Predictions of independent surveys aside, internal surveys of both the BJP and the Congress are keeping both of them optimistic. According to BJP insiders, the party’s internal survey predicts 100 seats in the 224-member assembly. The Congress’s survey predicts 110 seats for it.
In this scenario, the two major parties have adopted different strategies. The opposition is focusing on building public perceptions about the BJP being a divided house and its ‘failed’ governance model in Karnataka. Meanwhile, the BJP is focusing on what it’s best at — seat-by-seat micro-management with its solid organisational machinery and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popular appeal.
BJP’s micro-management
Mysore MP Pratap Simha is spending most of his time campaigning in Varuna — an assembly constituency that falls outside his Lok Sabha boundaries. Congress heavyweight Siddaramaiah is contesting from this assembly seat, which falls in the Chamarajanagar Lok Sabha constituency.
In order to take on Siddaramaiah in a constituency where Lingayats have a significant presence, the BJP has fielded V. Somanna, a Lingayat leader.
“He (Siddaramaiah) is a minority appeaser and he must lose,” Simha tells ThePrint.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Mysuru, which is adjacent to Varuna. Union Home Minister and the party’s chief strategist Amit Shah is scheduled to hold a rally in Varuna next week. Siddaramaiah has left it to his son, Yathindra S., the sitting MLA from Varuna, to run the campaign. The BJP is, however, trying to turn so much heat on Siddaramaiah’s turf that the former CM — a popular leader who has been campaigning across the state — has been forced to focus on his own constituency.
In Bengaluru, when ThePrint caught up with BJP MP Tejasvi Surya Wednesday morning, he was rushing out to meet the Naidu community. Meanwhile, BJP leader and former Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh was holding another meeting with Hindi-speaking voters in another locality.
The BJP has deployed about 50 leaders, including MPs and MLAs from different states, to meet and address migrants in Bengaluru. BJP strategists in Bengaluru told ThePrint that a similar constituency-specific strategy is being followed across the state.
Tejasvi Surya tells ThePrint that too much is being read into the exit of former chief minister Jagadish Shettar and former deputy chief minister Laxman Savadi.
“We are a cadre-based party, not a leader-based party,” he says.
Congress’ perception battle strategy
Congress leaders also concede that the entry of Shettar and Savadi into the party fold is unlikely to swing Lingayat votes.
“For all you know, they may end up losing in their own constituencies. But the fact is that their defections built a public perception about the BJP losing prominent Lingayat leaders. That helps our narrative. We would have lost those seats anyway. Now we have at least a chance to win and also show that the BJP is disintegrating,” a senior Congress leader confides.
He says that in 2021, when state Congress president D.K. Shivakumar hired DesignBoxed, an election campaign management company founded by Naresh Arora, the latter’s brief was clear — to capture the people’s minds with constant activities and expose the shortcomings in governance.
“You must have seen how the Congress was active on Covid, water, corruption, and a host of other issues. It managed to build on the fault lines in the BJP and constantly kept pressure on the government by exposing corruption cases and misgovernance. It was because of the Congress’s efforts that this 40 per cent commission government tag stuck,” says the Congress leader.
As for public perception, Congress strategists say that they managed to create an impression that the BJP-led government was on its way out. “People may not give votes because they think that it’s a 40 per cent commission government,” a Congress election strategist tells ThePrint. “But it helps in building a mahaul (environment). (It is) the same about the entry of BJP leaders like Shettar and Savadi. They may not bring votes but they have created the impression of an exodus from the BJP. That has also helped in keeping our workers charged.”
The Congress, the strategist says, isn’t a “cadre-based party like the BJP”.
“That’s why it’s important to create an atmosphere where Congress workers and voters come out of their homes,” he says.
The BJP has been battling perception problems right since the formation of the BJP-led government in 2019 — the high command versus Yediyurappa narrative, sidelining of the Lingayat strongman, infighting, corruption charges, misgovernance, and exodus of leaders. But it hopes to change the narrative in the next 10 days before the 10 May polls.
“The Congress has already peaked. It’s going to decline now. PM Modi will change it all in the next 10 days,” a BJP leader tells ThePrint.
The party has scheduled around 20 public meetings and four roadshows by Modi in Karnataka in the next 10 days. But Congress strategists argue that it’s too late for the BJP to make up for the lost ground.
Both sides exude confidence in the success of their strategies but at the same time, both sound diffident.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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