Chamundeshwari is set to see a direct contest between Congress and JD(S), and it seems the BJP wants to fight Siddaramaiah by ensuring the votes against him are not split.
Bengaluru: Chamundeshwari, like several other constituencies in the Old Mysuru area, is largely going to witness a Congress versus Janata Dal (Secular) battle. The BJP does not have much of a hold in this region, although it did win the Mysuru Lok Sabha seat in 2014.
In Chamundeshwari, the fight is between chief minister Siddaramaiah and the JD(S) candidate G.T. Deve Gowda, who was once his election agent. But now comes the announcement that the BJP will field a nondescript local RSS worker, Gopal Rao, against these two heavyweights.
Why? Insiders say that it is to ensure Siddaramaiah is defeated by keeping the contest virtually bipolar, and also making sure that the BJP is seen to contest all 224 seats in the 12 May assembly elections.
An unknown quantity
Gopal Rao has been an RSS karyakarta since 1968, and has worked for the BJP in several roles for the last four decades. Yet, forget the public, he’s not well-known even in party circles.
A resident of Hinkal, on the outskirts of Mysuru, Rao has never won a single election he has contested. He is a farmer and spent time in jail during the Emergency. He had even contested a gram panchayat election two decades ago, and secured just 74 votes.
A senior BJP leader described Rao as a “dummy candidate”, someone fielded not to win, but simply to “ensure Siddaramaiah’s defeat”.
The last time Siddaramaiah fought from Chamundeshwari was in a 2006 bypoll, winning by a thin margin of 275 votes. The BJP wants to ensure even this is wiped away, even though by itself it’s unlikely to get any of the Kuruba votes which are firmly in Siddaramaiah’s corner, or the Vokkaliga vote that’s in Deve Gowda’s.
And yet, another BJP leader, on the condition of anonymity, insists Rao will be a giant-killer.
“The main reason we have decided on Rao is to ensure Siddaramaiah is defeated by an ordinary party worker. There cannot be a bigger embarrassment than that for the man sitting on the CM’s chair,” this leader claimed.