Bypolls a chance for CM to recover lost heft: Experts

Bengaluru After spending most of his term in office fighting internal discontentment, the bypolls to three constituencies on April 17 come as a fresh opportunity to Karnataka chief minister B S Yediyurappa to not only silence the opposition but also reestablish his image as the undisputed leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state

Bengaluru After spending most of his term in office fighting internal discontentment, the bypolls to three constituencies on April 17 come as a fresh opportunity to Karnataka chief minister B S Yediyurappa to not only silence the opposition but also reestablish his image as the undisputed leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state.

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On Tuesday, the Election Commission had announced that polling for the parliamentary seat of Belagavi (Belgaum) and two assembly constituencies in Maski and Basavakalyan will be held on April 17.

“The expectations will be high because the government (party in power) is expected to win the bypolls,” Narendra Pani, political analyst and faculty at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) said. “If he (Yediyurappa) wins, he will certainly know how to use the victory as it will become difficult for the dissident to go against him,” he added.

In 2017, then chief minister Siddaramaiah had asserted his leadership and silenced calls to replace him after he won the Gundlupet and Nanjangud bypolls which the Congress had lost in previous elections. However, demands for Siddaramaiah’s removal were only raised within the state unit. For Yediyurappa, the challenges lay at both the state and the Centre with whom his relations have soured in recent years.

Ever since he came to power, Yediyurappa has gone out of his way to fulfil his obligation towards the turncoats, fueling dissent among his core-party legislators in the process.

To ensure his victory in the bypolls, the chief minister will have to get his party and divided government behind him. Of the three seats, Maski in Raichur district is a crucial one. In 2018, the Congress’s Pratapgouda Patil had won the seat with a margin of just 2013 votes against Basanagowda Turviha of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Yediyurappa will be required to convince his party leadership and its earlier candidate to lend their support to Patil who was among the 17 legislators who had resigned from the former H D Kumaraswamy-led Janata Dal (Secular) government and joined the saffron camp in November, 2019.

The Basavakalayan seat was held by Congress B Narayana Rao but fell vacant after his demise last year.

Similarly, the parliamentary seat in Belagavi fell vacant after the death of Union Suresh Angadi last year. Though Angadi had won this seat with over 63% of the vote share in 2019, analysts believe that the revival of the Belgaum border dispute by BJP’s ally-turned-rival Shiv Sena in Maharashtra is likely to play a significant factor in the bypolls.

There were 58 candidates in the fray from this seat last year, a tactic used by the Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti (MES) to split the votes of both the national parties whom they have accused of ignoring their pleas pertaining to the region.

The MES, an umbrella organisation created to integrate Marathi speaking majority districts of Karnataka with Maharashtra, has decided to neither support the Congress nor the BJP in the by-polls this year.

While Yediyurappa may have reconciled with the fact that this could possibly be his last stint as chief minister, analysts believe that his reservation-based politics in recent weeks and months is in the direction to cement his legacy as the ‘sole leader’ of the party and possible face of the next assembly elections as well.

With no second-rung leadership to match the chief minister’s stature, the BJP is digging deep to find a credible replacement or lose a state which is key to its plans of penetrating deeper into Tamil Nadu and Kerala where it has little or no presence at all.

Yediyurappa is also the leader of the dominant and politically-influential Lingayat community and any efforts to unseat him before his term is likely to trigger a backlash like it did in 2013. A disgruntled Yediyurappa had quit the BJP in 2012 (just before the elections in 2013), bringing the party down from 110 seats in 2008 to just 40 in 2013, thereby giving an edge to the Congress led by Siddaramaiah.

Besides, the bypolls are also crucial for Yediyurappa to placate his second son B Y Vijayendra.

“His son has been given the responsibility of the Maski assembly constituency and the intentions of Yediyurappa are very clear,” a north Karnataka-based political analyst said on condition of anonymity.

Vijayendra has been accused of running a parallel administration with the Yediyurappa government, earning the ire of ministers and several seniors within the party fold. A senior office bearer of the state BJP, Vijayendra had registered his first victory during the KR Pete bypolls in December 2019.

Meanwhile, the bypolls also pose a challenge to the opposition, mainly the faction-hit Congress, which had two of the three seats in the previous elections.

“The Congress has to win at least one of the three bypoll seats for D K Shivakumar (state party chief) to be counted as a leader,” the analyst said.

The infighting within the Congress in the state has dented the party’s chances of cornering a government which is already facing pressure from its dissidents.

While Siddaramaiah has refused to cede control of the Congress in Karnataka, Shivakumar is battling to assert himself and his plans to switch from a caste-based support to mass-based support like the BJP.

Both assembly seats are also in the Kalyana-Karnataka (formerly Hyderabad-Karnataka) area, one of the most backward regions in the country. This region has not received much attention and it remains to be seen if the Congress can iron out its internal differences and cash in on these weaknesses.

The role of the JD(S) will also be crucial as regional outfit led by former prime minister H D Deve Gowda and former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy share an on-and-off partnership with the BJP.

While the JD(S) does not have a strong presence in all the three constituencies, it remains to be seen which way the supporters will swing since the outfit has so far skirted the possibility of contesting any of the three seats.