In 2008, Karnataka shored up the BJP’s numbers with an unprecedented 18 MPs. In 2014, they may be able to muster just half that.
In 2008, Karnataka shored up the BJP’s numbers with an unprecedented 18 MPs. In 2014, they may be able to muster just half that.
With the urban local body polls delivering an unequivocal vote of no-confidence against the ruling BJP in Karnataka, party chief Rajnath Singh faces the prospect of losing not just his party’s tenuous foothold in the South in the coming Assembly polls, but a possible wipeout here in the equally critical Lok Sabha election of 2014.
In 2008, Karnataka shored up the BJP’s numbers with an unprecedented 18 MPs. In 2014, it will be a miracle if they muster even half that.
Mr Singh, with active encouragement of Gujarat chief minister and Prime Minister hopeful Narendra Modi, is believed to have reached out to the great spoiler, former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, whose breakaway Karnataka Janata Paksha may have done well only in pockets like Lingayat-dominated Haveri, but split the saffron vote across the Lingayat belt in north Karnataka and equally critical coastal districts that former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee once said would be the BJP’s for eternity.
For the first time in 40 years, the BJP has lost Udupi to the Congress. It lost Mangalore city, home to rampaging BJP-affiliated Bajrang Dal mobs, who terrorise young women with their moral policing, and attacks on churches. The beneficiary, again, is the Congress. The BJP also lost Bellary, unable to cash in on the Reddy brothers’ waning hold. Clearly, chief minister Jagadish Shettar’s Lingayat credentials were unequal to the task of swinging this vote-bank that his rival, Mr Yeddyurappa, claims for his own. The ignominious defeat is that much harder for a national party that banks on the urban rather than rural vote.
But before the celebrations begin in the Congress camp for a well-deserved victory under KPCC president G. Parameshwar, that presages almost certain change in the May Assembly polls, the party must ask itself why it couldn’t make its other rival, the Janata Dal (S), sweat enough in Maddur and Old Mysore. Is it time to rope in the other vote-catcher S.M. Krishna?
Clearly, these local body polls were a dummy run for the real thing: an Assembly election that is there for the Congress to win. Or lose.
