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HomeOpinionThe Congress-JD (S) alliance won this round, but their real test starts...

The Congress-JD (S) alliance won this round, but their real test starts now

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With B. S. Yedyurappa’s speech and resignation, the curtains came down on one of the murkiest and most action packed two days in the state’s political history.

History, they say, repeats itself, the first time as a tragedy and the second time as farce.

Two decades after Atal Bihari Vajpayee unprecedentedly bowed out of the Lok Sabha with an emotional speech stirring the conscience of the members of Parliament and citizens before stomping away to the Rashtrapati Bhavan to tender his resignation, B.S. Yeddyurappa reenacted the script Saturday. Vajpayee’s government lasted 13 days, the latter’s a mere two days.

After much bravado, the seemingly irrational decision to stake claim when the numbers were not on his side, met its logical conclusion. In a choked voice, he invoked the farmers of the state several times and that how after 70 years of independence, even the most basic facilities of irrigation and drinking water had not been fulfilled. He rued that it was his vision to make Karnataka a model state, but was deprived of this opportunity by both the mandate and the coming together of hitherto bitter rivals.

There was a clarion call too that he was still agile. Having come from a background of agitation and activism, he will not take this lying down and will win a massive majority in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and also the next assembly elections, before rushing away to the Raj Bhavan to tender his resignation. With this, the curtains came down on one of the murkiest and most action packed two days in the state’s political history.

Even as the results started coming out on 15 May and it became evident that the BJP did not gain a simple majority, the speed with which a normally comatose Congress sprung to action must have shocked the BJP. This was the same party that had wasted time in Goa and let an opportunity pass. But in this case, the Congress played its cards to perfection.

From surrendering all that they had to the JD(S), and quickly calling on the governor with their claims, to the swift midnight drama at the Supreme Court, this was suddenly a re-energised party that was putting up a fight to the finish. This should have given enough hints to the BJP on the mood in the Congress camp.

Just as in the Delhi assembly where despite emerging as the single largest party, the BJP under Dr Harsh Vardhan decided to seek a high moral ground, sit out and let the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party form the government, Karnataka should have followed a similar approach. As in the case of the Congress and the AAP, the JD(S) and Congress have been the bitterest rivals. They had just emerged from an election where they said the vilest things to each other. Siddaramaiah swore on Deve Gowda that under no circumstance would his son Kumaraswamy ever become chief minister.

On his part, Kumaraswamy repeatedly assured voters that in the case of a hung assembly, even if the two national parties reached out to him, he would prefer fresh polls than aligning with them. Rahul Gandhi had called the JD(S) the B-team of the BJP and that the ‘S’ in their name stood for ‘Sangh Parivar’. His words come back to bite him now as everyone wonders who is whose B-team.

While one may dismiss all these as election time rhetoric, the hostility runs deeper, both historically and socially. Right from 2004 when the Congress under Dharam Singh formed a government with the JD(S), the latter has been on record stating how the Congress plays predator in an alliance and is all out to finish off the regional party. It was this that spurred Kumaraswamy to align with the BJP in 2006. He even mentioned several times then that working with the BJP and Yeddyurappa was far easier for him than the autocratic Congress.

The only part of Karnataka where the JD(S) has any notable presence is Old Mysuru and here their principal rival is not the BJP but the Congress. A lot of grassroots animosity exists between the two parties. With what face would the JD(S) now reach out to their voters in front of whom they ran a bitter campaign against the Congress and even had the chief minister Siddaramaiah defeated in Chamundeshwari? For most of the JD(S) karyakartas on ground, the principal foe is the Congress with whom their leadership is now breaking bread.

The done-to-death fig leaf of ‘secularism’ and coming together to “keep communal elements at bay” doesn’t hold water on the ground where the vote banks of AHINDA and Vokkaligas of the Congress and JD(S) respectively are at perennial loggerheads with each other.

Would it not have been prudent for the BJP to sit back and enjoy this palace of cards collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, even as they constantly remind the voters of this farce and the MLAs of their inherent incompatibility with their alliance partner? A Delhi-like circumstance of fresh elections in a few months or a year would have been a most likely possibility.

All along, the BJP could have played the victim card and how the opportunistic alliance (which it truly is) ganged up merely to keep them out. With agencies of law catching up with several tainted and criminal elements in the alliance, the marriage of convenience would have faced further ruptures. The tallest Lingayat leader being denied his due would have added more brownie points and helped the BJP consolidate further in Central, Mumbai and Hyderabad Karnataka where the Lingayats dominate. Sometimes, losing small battles for the bigger war is a much better strategy rather than winning every fight.

Instead, in this mad rush to form government by all means, the BJP has dented its own moral sheen and all the parties have ended up making a spectacle of Karnataka in the nation’s eyes. The naked power play, leaked audio tapes of inducements of money and ministry, the acrimony, and the vulgar resort politics where freshly minted MLAs were hurled around like sheep has done no good to any political party. It has only further lowered the dignity and the confidence of the people in the political system.

The Congress-JD (S) alliance might have won this round for now. But their real test starts now — right from the formation of a ministry to the constant Damocles’ sword hanging on their head due to the wafer thin majority, to keeping their disgruntled flock together and dealing with a hostile central government. Whoever won or lost this disgusting political game in Karnataka, the average voter is the one who has lost. At this, political pundits and the netas might just turn around and say that’s what the voter seems to have willed in Mandate 2018.

Dr Vikram Sampath is a Bengaluru-based award-winning author/historian and political commentator

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1 COMMENT

  1. Ultimately I think Karnataka is heading for President’s Rule and there could be another election in the next 6 months or so.

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