Ultimate saffronist steps across the rekha?

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The importance that the BJP is giving to the Legislative Council elections that are due three weeks from now, give the game away. This is a party that may take to the airwaves and pound away, oh so holier than thou, at the troubled Congress for its various acts of omission and commission.

But beneath the high octane attack is a nervousness that is all too palpable. Lose these eleven seats – make that 12 with the late V.S. Acharya’s seat also in contention — and it could be curtains for a party that was once synonymous with community service and old world values and had the solid, if blind backing of all religious groups of a certain persuasion. And oh yes, the unqualified Hindu vote all tied up in a bag.

The spider in the tangled web is of course the irascible former chief minister, spinning confusion, spewing venom and vitriol at enemies, both real and imagined. B.S. Yeddyurappa’s new office, rented from his good friend Lehar Singh in the heart of old world Malleswaram may well be a place where the people who still believe he can get things done, line up for favours.

But those with their ears to the ground say that one – remember it’s just one – of the factors could be that a man who called the shots and had the entire party machinery jump to attention at the mere snap of his fingers, has no place to call his own in his own party headquarters.

And that doesn’t sit well with him at all. Or his supporters. In the days when the BJP had only two seats in parliament, the spartan backrooms in the sprawling Ashoka Road complex in Delhi were occupied by a slew of saffronists, some with official tags, many more without. A certain Narendra Modi, a Govindacharya and the always accessible Jana Krishnamurthy were parked there. Bori, bistar, conversation and not much else.

Why was it not possible for the party to do the same for Yeddyurappa? And if they could live down Bangaru Laxman being caught on camera, surely they could do the same with BSY, is the rumble in his ranks. CBI raids or no.

The trouble with BSY of course is that he wanted something, a tag, a position that would be an honourable cover while he faced the challenge of corruption charges and who knows, even jail. Something that showed that the party he worked with, was ready to stand by him in his hour of need.
But with none of that forthcoming, and whispers of him being damaged goods and a pariah, its little wonder that a BSY, who looks as if he’s about to explode anyway, is going off like a firecracker.

His dilemma — stay with the party and accept that you are now a nobody, or leave and have your umbilical line cut, your raison d’etre removed. The BJP has been at the heart and soul of Yeddyurappa’s being for all of his political life. And he knows little else. Is there life outside the BJP for this man? He certainly seems to want to give it a shot. There can be no other explanation for the unrelenting barrage against his bete noire Ananth Kumar, bordering on the bizarre, that he has unleashed on the city MP. An invitation to an expulsion…

Unless his anger is blinding him to reality, surely even BSY must realise that nobody is fooled; that when he lashes out at Ananth Kumar, it’s obvious he is in fact attacking the party patriarch L.K. Advani.
Some say that this is part of a bigger plan hatched in Delhi to sideline Advani in the run up to the parliamentary polls that must see the rise of a younger face with wider acceptability. Like Sushma Swaraj. Or Arun Jaitley. Or Modi.

And that as BSY - egged on by cohorts in Delhi - ups the ante on Ananth Kumar, at whose door, all of the ills of the realm are being laid, the party will be prodded into nudging Advani aside once and for all, even as BSY, who could go from the ultimate insider to the complete outsider, experiments with life outside the BJP. State elections next year a precursor to parliamentary polls in 2014, when he could, with his group — be it 20 or 50 — become a force to reckon with in his own right. Perhaps even return to the saffron fold, as did the explosive Uma Bharti. Or, despite the denials, work in tandem with the Congress, BSY’s northern strongholds married to the Congress’ south and west. Who knows...There’s talk that Sharad Pawar did indeed meet BSY and advised him to set up his own party, become a regional satrap rather than be at the mercy of Delhi.

In the run up to the council elections on June 11, the state unit is bent on retaining the dozen seats in contention. Of the seventy odd seats, 21 will see new members, of whom three will be nominated, and six, three graduates and three teachers seats, are up for grabs. With the party uncertain of what kind of a hold BSY has over the house, the burra sahibs are hitching up their dhotis and getting down to business, to ensure that a Bellary or an Udupi-Chikmagalur is not revisited.

Losing the Bellary seat was the first indicator of the malaise eating away at the BJP’s innards. Clearly, the party’s inability to pull together at that point, which allowed Janardhan Reddy protégé Sreeramulu to waltz away with the spoils, followed by the Congress snatching victory from all but certain defeat in Chikamgalur-Udupi as BSY stubbornly sat it out, showed how fragile the BJP’s hold is over the state.

The tried and tested route that politicians take to the polls is by tapping a complex mix of loyalties that goes into the bowl — caste, community and street. And when they do get elected, the favours that have to be returned to keep the cosy relationship going are many and varied.

That’s politics as we have known it, these last sixty odd years, attracting a species that will do anything to push himself forward. Self before service?

Which is why as Ashwin Mahesh, one of the city’s most clear-headed thinker- visionaries throws his hat into the council ring, one can only applaud. The Lok Satta party has not had much success in the past. But in the current anti-political wave that has gripped the nation, the hope is that candidates like Ashwin, contesting the Bangalore Graduates Constituency, and others like him who put service before self will transform the political landscape, become pathfinders to the future, and people like you and I, can finally have a say over who governs us.