Bengaluru: Former chief minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Jagadish Shettar joined the Congress Monday after days of deliberations and intense discussions.
This move is expected to give the Congress party a significant boost in the Lingayat support base.
Shettar, denied a ticket by the BJP to contest the assembly elections to be held next month, has already been given one from the Congress and will contest from Hubli-Dharwad (Central) seat.
The 67-year-old former CM, speaker and two-time leader of the Opposition, is one of the biggest leaders of the dominant and decisive Lingayat community in the north-western districts of Karnataka, or Kittur-Karnataka, which has a total of 50 seats over six districts.
In 2012, Shettar had replaced D.V. Sadanand Gowda as CM after the latter fell out with Yediyurappa. This despite Gowda having been nominated by the Lingayat leader for the post following his resignation in the wake of Lokayukta’s report on illegal mining in Karnataka.
“Commonly, they (Lingayats) identify B.S. Yediyurappa as their leader. But they would see Shettar in second place,” said Congress’s legislature party leader Siddaramaiah speaking to media persons in Bengaluru Monday.
“They (BJP) insulted Yediyurappa by forcing him out of the CM’s post mercilessly. That is why he (Shettar) cried when he resigned. He has spoken with a lot of pain. The way BJP treated him shouldn’t happen to any leader in any party,” he added.
In Karnataka’s heavily caste-dependent politics, parties are known to seek out the support of specific communities. The BJP is heavily reliant on the Lingayats and has had three chief ministers from the community in their nine years in power. D.V. Sadananda Gowda was the only Vokkaliga CM of the BJP.
The Lingayats reportedly account for nearly 17 per cent of the state’s total population, followed closely by the Vokkaligas at around 14 per cent.
Some reports suggest that these two communities vote en masse — as was seen in 2008 when the Lingayats came out in full support of Yediyurappa, and then in 2018 when the Vokkaliga community rallied behind the former PM H.D. Deve Gowda-led Janata Dal (Secular).
The Congress is now highlighting Yediyurappa’s “injustice” and “ill-treatment” of the Lingayat community.
“Lingayats are not treated as the core of BJP, but merely a vote bank. Karnataka will witness a new massive political churn because of how Lingayats were mistreated by the BJP & specifically Two Vested Common Interests. Lingayats are set to return HOME to the Congress in 2023. A massive win for @INCKarnataka (sic),” M.B. Patil, one of the biggest Lingayat leaders in the Congress, said in a Twitter post.
Patil is considered instrumental in reaching out to Shettar and Laxman Savadi, another Lingayat leader from Belagavi.
Shettar is also related to Patil through veteran Congress leader Shamanur Shivashankarappa. Shettar’s son is married to Shivashankarappa’s granddaughter, whose other granddaughter is engaged to Patil’s son, indicating political alliances between powerful families that cut party lines.
In fact, the late-night discussions between Shettar and Congress Sunday were held in Shivashankarappa’s son Ganesh’s home in Bengaluru’s Sadashivanagar.
Donning a Congress scarf around his neck for the first time Monday, Shettar told the media, “I respect B.S. Yediyurappa as he is a senior leader of the community. Lingayat community members from different parts of the state called me and asked me why there has been injustice, it has pained us.”
Shettar first joined the Jana Sangh in 1967 and has since been associated with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and finally the BJP. He entered the assembly for the first time in 1994 and won a total of six consecutive terms from Hubli Rural and Dharwad central.
Congress’s relationship with Lingayats
The Congress party is actively pursuing the Lingayat support base following nearly three decades of being abandoned by the community after former chief minister Veerendra Patil was unceremoniously dismissed in October 1990 by then Congress president Rajiv Gandhi.
The community then moved to backing the erstwhile Janata Party and, finally, began to give its support to the Yediyurappa-led BJP in 2008. The community moved further away from the Congress when the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government in 2018 decided to accord a separate religious minority tag to the Lingayats.
Even though this was a long-pending demand, the decision to draw a distinction between Veerashaivas, a sub-sect, and Lingayats was projected as an effort by Siddaramaiah to “divide” Hindu society.
Now, the Congress has Shettar to drive home the point that the BJP has done little to retain Lingayats’ support and, hopefully, reclaim the lost voter base.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
Also read: Lingayats, Vokkaligas get lion’s share in Karnataka BJP seat allocation with 103 out of 224