At the height of the campaign for the Sira bypoll that was held on 3 November—whose results will be announced on 10 November—all roads led to a tiny farmhouse in the remote Bellavi village in the largely arid Tumakuru district of southern Karnataka.
A few miles from the little-known Sira, this is where Vijayendra, the 44-year-old son of Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa and the party’s state unit vice president, had set up his election war room for the 3 November bypoll that incidentally saw a record 84.5% turnout.
Vijayendra isn’t the candidate, but he could well be. In fact, the surprise entry of BSY’s son to manage the BJP’s prospects turned a straight fight between the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular) into a triangular contest overnight. It saw Janata Dal (Secular) supremo H.D. Deve Gowda and his son, JD(S) president H.D. Kumaraswamy, hotfooting to Sira in a bid to retain control of the poll, with victory predicated on support from the Kunchatiga Vokkaliga sub-sect.
In fact, the Congress big guns, newly inducted Congress state chief D.K. Shivakumar and former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, arrived there as well, and so did the respected Kunchatiga seer, who, in an unusual break with practice, visited the home of the JD(S) leaders, only reinforcing the buzz that the seer was trying to stop a backroom deal between Kumaraswamy and Vijayendra that would see the Vokkaliga votes go en masse to the BJP.
The JD(S), with its shrinking footprint in the state, draws its support from the Mandya-Mysuru belt and faced embarrassment when the Vokkaligas snubbed JD(S) patriarch Deve Gowda. Fighting a joint Congress-JD(S) candidate, in a parliamentary poll, he paid the price then for not diverting the waters of the Hemavathi to this area and choosing to route it to his own backyard.
All eyes right now are on not just the United States, where a woman—and a woman of colour, part Indian at that—was finally elected to the second highest office in the land, but on Karnataka and Bihar too, where results will be out on 10 November. And in Bihar, it could spell the end of the Nitish Kumar-led coalition government, as people across the world are voting out incumbents who no longer seem to address their aspiration—be it in Washington, Patna or Sira.
This is a vote for change. And journalists who have rarely interacted with the son of the Karnataka CM at such close quarters sense that the manner in which Vijayendra is seeking to widen his party’s imprint, beyond the Lingayat-dominated swathe of the centre and the north, was a force for change. They are impressed with Vijayendra’s number crunching, his outreach to every community, be it the SC (left)-ST or the Other Backward Castes, which have traditionally stayed with the Congress, and his discussions on how to boost farming incomes, jobs and education in his conversation with community leaders in this largely agrarian economy.
Given that the Lingayat community, traditionally backers of the BJP, numbers a minuscule 5,000 in this constituency and have little or no impact in the southern part of the state, Vijayendra needs the requisite numbers on board to win it for the BJP’s young candidate, ex-Congressman Dr Rajesh Gowda. He is up against Congress veteran T.B. Jayachandra who, in the last poll, lost to the JD(S)’s B. Satyanarayana. It is the latter’s death that has necessitated the bypoll. Satnarayana’s widow, the reluctant and ailing Ammajamma, who wanted her son fielded, is the JD(S) candidate in this Kunchajiga Vokkaliga-dominated seat.
The answer to why Vijayendra is taking on the impossible is manifold. Red-faced last year when a BJP cabal blocked him from standing from Varuna in his bid to checkmate Congress leader Siddaramaiah’s son, Yatindra, in the 2018 Assembly polls, as the RSS pracharaks screamed dynastic politics and money power, only months later in December 2019, Vijayendra delivered the K.R. Pete seat in the heart of Vokkaliga country. It was a bypoll that no one in the BJP wanted to oversee, until a young Ashwath Narayan, the state’s deputy chief minister, who is a Vokkaliga, and Vijayendra, the Lingayat outsider in the south, took it on – and won.
This time too, the parallels are striking. No one in the BJP wanted to touch Sira. Barring that is Vijayendra, who, as the party’s newly appointed vice president, was determined to prove that his father’s writ isn’t restricted to his Lingayat base, however strong and impactful on election results that vote is for the BJP.
Will he win it for the party? And if he does, will he finally silence the triumvirate of state party chiefs and BSY critics, Nalin Kumar Kateel, B.L. Santhosh and Pralhad Joshi, who want to push virtually the only BJP leader who wins polls for the party today out to pasture. Or is this a sop—being given the post of state vice president, at the first step, to assuage BSY’s hurt and sense of being wronged if he is forced into stepping down as chief minister this coming December? Now, Vijayendra is also being offered the chance to contest the Basavakalyan seat that his advisers would like him to take on, as it is a Lingayat-dominated seat. If he wins, it would give the young leader much needed experience as a legislator in the assembly. Except, once again, after Sira, will it be a quid pro quo for a BSY exit? And is this what BSY wants: A sunset deal in return for a safe haven for his son, who can then be groomed to fill his shoes as the next Lingayat face of the BJP? Will the anti-BSY group greenlight it? The BJP knows the consequences they could face if BSY chooses to leave in a huff as he did when he launched the Karnataka Janata Party and the rump BJP won 40 odd seats instead of its mark of 130.
The bypolls will simultaneously be a test for Congress’ Pradesh Congress chief D.K. Shivakumar, who aspires to be the face of the Vokkaliga community in the state. Faced with his first set of bypolls after he took over the helm from former Congress chief minister Siddarmaiah’s protégé, Dinesh Gundurao, in a constituency controlled by the JD(S), he also has the bypoll for the R.R. Nagar seat in the state capital Bengaluru to win. He has put his brother D.K. Suresh in charge and fielded H. Kusuma, the young Vokkaliga widow of former IAS officer D.K. Ravi, who took his own life, as the candidate.
The BJP, in turn, has fielded Congress turncoat T. Munirathna as its candidate here. Munirathna, alongside 17 other Congress legislators switched to the BJP, brought down the JD(S)-led Congress government, and opened the doors for a quietly triumphant BSY to form a BJP government again in the state last year.
Congress insiders openly admit that R. R. Nagar, which Munirathna has won consecutive terms, could be virtually unwinnable as many Congress workers have stayed loyal to the former Congressman, rather than the party. A master at marshalling votes, with slum clusters in this largely wealthy neighbourhood, said to be completely under his control, he is up against D.K. Shivakumar’s proclivity to turn adversity to his advantage. The buzz is that, despite the low voter turnout of 45.2%, D.K. Shivakumar may have co-opted much of that street power for the Congress.
And this may be spinning from the conspiracy theory doing the rounds that the chief minister, despite his promise of a cabinet berth to Muniratna, doesn’t want him to win. And even if he does win, doesn’t really want him in his cabinet either, handling the lucrative Power portfolio. He may have signalled as much to his party workers, say Congress insiders, even as the BJP laughs off the charge, insisting they will win both seats. Meanwhile, the Congress is making the same claim.
In Sira though, DK is up against the JD(S), a long term foe, invested in ensuring that he does not emerge as the Vokkaliga leader who eclipses the father-son duo and their legacy. D.K. Shivakumar’s other ‘frenemy’ could be the Congress’ strongman and Kuruba leader, Siddaramaiah. Congress insiders say that in Sira, the Kuruba vote could be diverted to the BJP, if only to ensure that Shivakumar is cut to size.
As for the BSY-Vijayendra duo, a victory for the BJP is said to have everything to do with pushing the chief minister to hang up his shoes. That his meetings in Delhi with Prime Minister Narendra Modi are not marked by the bonhomie they shared when they were both chief ministers of their respective states is no secret. Equations changed with the demise of Arun Jaitley, the man who saw early on the potential in Modi as well as Yediyurappa. In BSY’s case, he picked the latter over Lal Krishna Advani’s then favourite Ananth Kumar as the face of the party in the state. Pralhad Joshi, who has the ear of the powerful electoral tactician, and Home Minister Amit Shah, is said to be the prime mover behind the push for a younger BJP leader. Thus far, none of BSY’s contemporaries, neither Jagadish Shettar or Sadananda Gowda, has proved equal to the task. Pralhad Joshi’s ambitions to step into BSY shoes may be scuppered because he is a Brahmin. Basvanagouda Patil Yatnal’s vitriol against BSY has largely nixed his chances.
For the BJP, then, it’s not just about winning the two seats in the Karnataka bypolls. Winning or losing them makes little difference to their numbers in the house. This is about ensuring that Vijayendra comes out smelling like roses and that his father, the BJP leader credited with giving them their first presence in the south, is given an honourable exit.