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Defection politics heats up in Karnataka
On Tuesday, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president, DK Shivakumar also hinted that several BJP legislators were in touch with the grand old party, waiting to return to the fold.
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The leader of the opposition in Karnataka assembly and senior Congress leader, Siddaramaiah, on Tuesday said that several legislators from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Janata Dal (Secular) or JD(S) are in touch with him, indicating the possibility of more defections ahead of the 2023 assembly elections in the state.
“People from both the BJP and JD(S) are in touch with me and I cannot name them. But only those people who believe in the party’s ideology, accept the leadership and join unconditionally can come,” Siddaramaiah said on Tuesday.
Siddaramaiah’s claims lend to the statements made by BJP legislator Basanagouda Patil (Yatnal), who on Monday said there were several persons within the saffron outfit who had already “booked their ticket” to return to the Congress. He was making an indirect reference to MLAs who defected from the Congress-JD(S) coalition government in 2019.
On Tuesday, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president, DK Shivakumar also hinted that several BJP legislators were in touch with the grand old party, waiting to return to the fold. “Unlike Yatnal, I cannot speak on such things on the road,” Shivakumar said on Tuesday.
Chief minister Basavaraj Bommai on Tuesday, however, brushed aside the Congress’s “big claims”.
“A sense of insecurity is haunting the Congress. Two top leaders of the party are issuing statements with big claims. There is no question of any one from BJP jumping the ship. We have many who quit Congress and joined us,” Bommai said.
He added that the BJP will gain further strength in the coming days.
With just over a year to go in the 2023 assembly elections and several other polls before that, all major parties are wary of defections likely to increase.
At least three people aware of the developments said some of the legislators who engineered the collapse of the HD Kumaraswamy-led Congress-JD(S) government in 2019 were now in talks with their former parties to return.
Political observers also point at an evident divide within the BJP. Members of the old guard nurse a feeling of neglect as they have been constantly overlooked to accommodate the new entrants, a political observer said, requesting anonymity.
Former chief minister and senior BJP leader BS Yediyurappa had gone out of his way to accommodate the 17 legislators, whose support helped him get to the top post.
Members of the old guard or those who have always been with the BJP have also expressed their unhappiness of being left out of the current Basavaraj Bommai-led state cabinet. There is a clear factionalism within the saffron outfit, the political observer added.
At least three legislators, who defected to the BJP in 2019, on Tuesday denied any plan to part ways with the ruling party.
State minister N Nagaraj was one of them. “Many people ask us to return to the Congress and I have told them that we cannot take a different decision for every election,” Nagaraj said.
He added that Siddaramaiah was in touch with him, but it was “not to discuss politics”.
Karnataka health minister Dr K Sudhakar, meanwhile, brushed aside Yatnal’s statements, calling them his “personal opinion”. People aware of the developments said no preferential treatment will be given anymore to those who had switched sides in 2019.
Though the BJP benefited from the defections in 2019, it also caused a significant amount of disenchantment among its core party workers, who were snubbed in favour of the new entrants.
The fear now is that the same leaders will want their supporters to be given preference in the upcoming elections to zilla and taluka panchayats and Bengaluru city corporation polls, the political observer said.
Chief minister Bommai has had a difficult six months in the top office, with his term being plagued with allegations of widespread corruption, discontentment among BJP legislators and workers as well as fuelling a divide that continues to widen ahead of the crucial polls.
