Bengaluru: There’s more trouble in store for the Janata Dal (Secular), still reeling under sexual assault allegations against members of its first family. A fortnight before legislative council elections in the state, alliance partner Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is eyeing JD(S) bastions, even pushing the alliance partner to give up its claim on an existing seat.
The BJP has fielded five candidates for the six vacancies in the 75-member upper house of the state legislature, leaving just one for the JD(S).
Peeved by the unilateral decision, the JD(S) has decided to field two candidates — one from the seat agreed upon by the alliance and the other from a seat from where the BJP is already fielding its candidate.
Even though the two parties are in talks to find a middle path, the unilateral move has added to the widening rift between the alliance partners, political observers say.
As things stand, the BJP has 32 members in the state legislature, its alliance partner (JDS) has seven and the Congress has 29.
The tenure of six sitting members — Chandrashekar B. Patil (Congress), Ayanur Manjunath (elected on a BJP ticket, now joined Congress after resigning), A. Deve Gowda (BJP), Y.A. Narayanaswamy (BJP), S.L. Bhoje Gowda (JD-S), and Marithibbe Gowda (elected on JD-S ticket, now joined Congress) — is ending on 21 June, necessitating the elections on 3 June.
For the Janata Dal (Secular) — already roiling in the aftermath of last year’s assembly elections when it was reduced to 19 assembly seats out of 224 — this tug-of-war over MLC seats comes at a turbulent time. This month, the party found itself on the backfoot over sexual assault allegations against its leaders H.D. Revanna and Prajwal Revanna, son and grandson of party patriarch and former Indian prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda.
The party is now fighting to thwart any attempt to undermine its presence in the upper house, one JD(S) leader said.
“Our representation in the upper house is coming down (due to the alliance with BJP) and in the coming days, Congress numbers will go up,” this leader said, adding that the party’s loss of ground in southern constituencies is currently “being discussed at the party level”.
Significantly, these differences with the BJP come to the fore even before the results of the ongoing Lok Sabha polls are announced. The two parties allied in September last year — only months after they found their numbers reduced in the assembly polls.
This is the second time that the two have partnered in the state. In 2007, the JD(S), led by H.D. Kumaraswamy, had pulled out of the alliance with the BJP barely a week after it handed over the CM’s chair to B.S. Yediyurappa.
Muzaffar Assadi, a political analyst and former faculty at the University of Mysore, believes that the BJP needs the JD(S) to “conquer” southern districts of Karnataka — the party’s gateway to the south and the only southern state where it has any significant presence. Prime Minister Narendra Modi needs the JD(S) to achieve the National Democratic Alliance’s ambitious target of “400 paar (400+)”, he said.
“The BJP has no base in south India. Unless and until they conquer south India, they (BJP) cannot cross 400 because all other places (states and regions in the north) are saturated now,” he said.
Also Read: Prajwal Revanna sex abuse case gives Kumaraswamy upper hand in JD(S) family power struggle
‘Conquer the south’
The seats that will fall vacant on 21 June are North-East Graduates, South-West graduates, Bangalore Graduates, South-East teachers, South-West teachers and South Teachers constituencies.
The BJP has nominated Amarnath Patil (North-East Graduates), Dhananjay Sarji (South-West Graduates), E.C. Ningaraju (Karnataka South teachers) and renominated two of its sitting MLCs — A. Deve Gowda (Bangalore Graduates) and Y.A. Narayanaswamy (Karnataka South-East Teachers).
Meanwhile, JD (S) leader S.L. Bhoje Gowda is the coalition candidate from the South-West Teachers constituency, where he will go up against former JD (S) leader Marithibbe Gowda, who’s now in the Congress.
Results of the elections will be announced on 3 June — the same day as the election.
The bone of contention between the BJP and the JD(S) is the Karnataka South Teachers seat. Here, the JD(S) announced Wednesday that it would field K. Vivekananda against BJP’s Ningaraju Gowda.
In the latest development, the two parties are in talks and the BJP candidate is likely to withdraw.
The South Teachers is a seat that represents around 15,000 educators from Mysuru, Chamarajanagar, Hassan, and Mandya — all regions that the JD(S) considers its bastions.
While accompanying the Congress candidate Marithibbe Gowda to file his nomination from the South-West Teachers seat Tuesday, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah expressed confidence in winning the polls. The Congress has fielded its candidates in all six seats.
“The (political) environment is good. The Congress has taken these elections very seriously this time and we had announced candidates six months ago,” the chief minister told reporters in Mysuru.
He also said that the BJP-JDS alliance made little difference and that it would “have no impact” on the MLC polls.
Meanwhile, the allegations against the Revannas, which range from sexual assault to abduction and criminal intimidation, have put the NDA alliance partners BJP and JD(S) on the defensive.
For the JD(S), further endangered by the allegations, an alliance with the BJP could mean survival — something the party leader quoted earlier admitted to.
According to this leader, the party would also have to make “certain compromises” — at least until it can make a comeback.
But Assadi believes the BJP needs the JD(S) just as much. “The BJP allied with the JD(S)…its main reason was to enter into those places where it had no base. In Old Mysuru, for example,” Assadi told ThePrint.
Between 2019 and 2021, when the BJP’s Bommai government ruled the state, the party used JD(S)’s help with the passage of bills in the legislative council. But the BJP and JD(S) now stare at the possibility of the Congress gaining a majority in the upper house.
For the BJP, losing more seats in the legislative council would erode its presence in the state legislature.
According to Assadi, unlike its coalitions in other states, the party is in a “contradictory position in Karnataka where they are trying to be aggressive vis-a-vis the regional party but at the same time they have an inherent feeling of insecurity”. “Both these feelings are playing together,” he said.
‘BJP devising strategy to corner Yediyurappa & sons’
The JD(S) draws its strength from the agrarian and land-owning Vokkaliga, a caste group found in large numbers across the southern districts, referred to as ‘old Mysuru region’.
Here, the Congress and the JD(S) traditionally have competed for space. In the 2023 assembly polls, the Congress won 37 of the 59 assembly segments in the region.
Meanwhile, the BJP has been struggling to get a grip in the region.
The party has come to power twice in Karnataka — 2008 and 2018 — but has fallen short of a majority both times, largely due to the loss of seats in the southern districts.
With internal as well as external factors challenging the very survival of the JD(S), the BJP sees this as the perfect opportunity to make inroads in Mysuru, political observers and analysts say.
But for this, the party must resolve problems such as infighting, with several senior leaders within the party such as K.S. Eshwarappa and D.V. Sadananda Gowda questioning the central BJP’s continued patronage of former chief minister and party B.S. Yediyurappa.
In fact, according to BJP sources, it was Yediyurappa who had agreed to give two seats to the JD(S) but this was eventually passed over by the national leadership.
The BJP’s decision to field Yediyurappa’s son B.Y. Raghavendra as its candidate from Shivamogga parliamentary seat and make the former CM’s younger son B.Y. Vijayendra the party’s state president has stirred dissent.
Indeed, rival parties, too, are now taking a jibe at the growing factionalism within the party. In a post on X Tuesday, Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah claimed that the BJP was getting ready to “behead” Vijayendra and pin its “loss” in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections on the “father and sons”.
ರಾಜ್ಯ @BJP4Karnataka ಪಕ್ಷದ ಮುಕ್ಕಾಲು ಪಾಲು ನಾಯಕರು ಬಿಜೆಪಿಯ ಈಗಿನ ಅಧ್ಯಕ್ಷ @BYVijayendra ಅವರ ತಲೆದಂಡಕ್ಕಾಗಿ ವ್ಯೂಹ ರಚನೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ತೊಡಗಿದ್ದಾರೆ. ಚುನಾವಣೆಯಲ್ಲಿನ ಹಿನ್ನಡೆಯನ್ನು ತಂದೆ-ಮಕ್ಕಳ ತಲೆಗೆ ಕಟ್ಟಿ ಅವರನ್ನು ಮೂಲೆಗೆ ತಳ್ಳುವ ಕಸರತ್ತಿನ ತಯಾರಿ ಭರದಿಂದ ನಡೆಯುತ್ತಿದೆ. ಇದಕ್ಕೆ ಆರ್.ಎಸ್.ಎಸ್ ನ ಒಂದು ಬಣದ ಆಶೀರ್ವಾದ ಕೂಡಾ…
— Siddaramaiah (@siddaramaiah) May 14, 2024
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
Also Read: ‘Threatened, blackmailed’ — JD(S) worker says Prajwal Revanna sexually abused her for over 3 yrs