Bengaluru: A section of the Veerashaiva-Lingayat community has thrown its weight behind the Congress for the 10 May Karnataka assembly elections and decided not to back the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) citing lack of respect for a group that has firmly stood behind the party since 2008.
A forum called the ‘Karnataka Lingayat Mattu Veerashaiva Vichar Vedike’, comprising thinkers from the community, has given a call to defeat the BJP in the upcoming elections as simmering resentment boils over the alleged “ill-treatment” of Lingayat strongman and former four-time state chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa since 2019.
Yediyurappa, 80, is currently serving as a member of the BJP’s parliamentary board committee. He had led the BJP to power in Karnataka for the first time in 2008 and last became CM in 2019 after the Kumaraswamy government lost its majority.
“The BJP does not need Lingayats. Lingayats don’t need the BJP,” stated a letter by the forum dated 6 May but released on social media Sunday.
“The decision has been taken by the entire community. Once they (BJP leaders) have said they do not want Lingayat leaders, why should we remain with them?” V.S. Natraj, a director of the central committee of the All India Veerashaiva Mahasabha, told ThePrint Sunday.
“The party (BJP in Karnataka) was built by Yediyurappa, B.B. Shivappa and several other leaders. Those days there was no BJP government at the Centre or state, nor anyone to fund us at the time, but we stood by the party, brought it to power and gave them 25 out of 28 seats in 2019 (Lok Sabha polls),” he said.
According to Natraj, it was the Lingayats who had brought the BJP to power not just in pockets where they were the dominant community but also helped sway popular opinion in favour of the party in other parts of Karnataka.
Speaking to the media in Hubballi Monday, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said: “The Lingayat forum is a fictional organisation. It does not exists at all.”
“The Veerashaiva is a very big community and it is not under any organisation. A lot of respect is given to the Veerashaiva Mahasabha, but it is not correct to use any organisation for the election purpose. If four or five persons say something, does it become the voice of the Lingayats? The Lingayat community is like an ocean. The Lingayat Forum is an organisation that emerged during the election,” he said.
According to unofficial estimates, the Lingayats are believed to account for 17 per cent of the state’s population, and 10 of the 23 chief ministers of Karnataka have been from the community. The BJP, in nine years of rule in Karnataka, has had three Lingayat chief ministers.
“The central leadership of the BJP did nothing to stop leaders like Arvind Bellad and Basanagouda Patil Yatnal from speaking against Yediyurappa openly. Nor did they take action against K.S. Eshwarappa for making a written complaint to the Governor against Yediyurappa when he was the chief minister,” Natraj said.
This, he alleged, was a ploy by leaders like B.L. Santhosh, BJP’s national general secretary (organisation), to sideline Lingayat leaders in Karnataka.
Elections for all 224 seats in Karnataka are scheduled for 10 May and counting will be held three days later.
The developments come even as the national leadership of the BJP, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, continues with the blitzkrieg of roadshows and rallies across the state to help the party retain power in the last leg of campaigning.
‘Why do they come to us?’
The last time a government had retained power in Karnataka was in the early 1980s and the BJP has placed its faith in Modi to help break this jinx.
In July 2021, the BJP forced Yediyurappa to step down as Karnataka chief minister — something that the Lingayat community took to heart — with the party’s central leadership giving no explanation for the same. The Lingayat strongman had even shed tears before putting down his papers.
The BJP then named Basavaraj Bommai, also a Lingayat, as CM but he does not enjoy the same stature as Yediyurappa within the community.
Senior leaders like Jagadish Shettar, a former chief minister, and Laxman Savadi, among others, were denied BJP tickets for the upcoming assembly elections and have since joined the Congress.
Shettar had alleged last month that it was Santhosh who was responsible for the sidelining of Lingayat leaders in Karnataka.
“B.L. Santhosh says that he does not want the votes of Lingayats. Then why do they come to us? They say that they do not want the votes of Muslims. Then why do they ask for their votes?” Shamanur Shivashankarappa, veteran Congress leader and president of the All India Veerashaiva Mahasabha, told reporters in Hubballi Saturday.
Shivashankarappa, Allum Veerabhadrappa, K.C. Kondaiah and Mohan Limbikai, among other leaders, visited the influential Moorusavir Mutt in Hubballi-Dharwad Friday.
According to a report in The Hindu, this meeting was also attended by seers from nearby regions such as Navalgund, Rayanal, and Rudrakshi Mutt among others, fuelling speculation that the community was not making light of the “humiliation” of its leaders.
The community has also reacted sharply to the creation of two new categories in the backward classes list in response to demands by the Panchamasali sub-sect to be included in the 2A category, which has a 15 per cent quota as against their existing category which has just 5 per cent.
The Bommai government first proposed to give the protesting Vokkaligas and Lingayats (both demanding increased reservation benefits) the additional allocation from the economically weaker section (EWS) quota. When this was rejected, they reacted by removing Muslims entirely from the backward classes list.
The Muslims were in the 2B category of the backward classes list, which has a 4 per cent quota, but Bommai proposed to equally distribute this allocation between the two new categories that includes Vokkaligas and Lingayats.
In Karnataka’s Belagavi, too, several seers have tried to persuade the Lingayat community not to back the BJP in order to contain the growing influence of Ramesh Jarkiholi, the sugar baron referred to as “Sahukar”, people aware of the developments told ThePrint.
A disqualified Congress legislator, Jarkiholi had joined the BJP in 2019.
Congress eyes Lingayat vote-base
The Congress is actively pursuing the Lingayat support base after nearly three decades of isolation by the community following the unceremonious removal of former chief minister Veerendra Patil from the top chair in October 1990 by then party president Rajiv Gandhi.
The community had then moved to backing the erstwhile Janata Party and finally consolidated behind Yediyurappa in 2008.
The Lingayats moved further away from the Congress when the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government in 2018 decided to accord a separate minority-religion status to the Lingayats.
Even though this was a long-pending demand, the decision to draw a distinction between Veerashaivas (a sub-sect, but used interchangeably with Lingayats) and the Lingayats was projected as an effort by Siddaramaiah to “break Hindu society”.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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