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In Karnataka’s Ballari, Congress and BJP fight a prestige battle via proxies
BJP leader B Sreeramulu has much at stake in Ballari, which is reserved for the Scheduled Tribe communities. He vacated the seat after he was elected to the assembly in May, and the party tried and failed to stake a claim to form the government, despite having won the highest number of seats.
The by-election to the Ballari Lok Sabha seat, among the five assembly and parliamentary seats for which voting is being held today, has seen a pitched battle with both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the ruling Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) alliance going all out to capture the seat.
BJP leader B Sreeramulu has much at stake in Ballari, which is reserved for the Scheduled Tribe communities. He vacated the seat after he was elected to the assembly in May, and the party tried and failed to stake a claim to form the government, despite having won the highest number of seats.
The BJP has fielded his sister J Shantha, who is a former MP, and she is up against VS Ugrappa of the Congress, a member of the legislative council. While it is these two candidates whose names will appear on the electronic voting machines, they have been proxies for the battles fought by other leaders.
On the one hand, Sreeramulu has battled the Congress’s DK Shivakumar — who has been given charge of winning the seat — on the other, mining baron G Janardhan Reddy has fought an ugly battle with his bete noire, former chief minister Siddaramaiah.
While the BJP has banked on its local leaders to do the job, highlighting the fact that Ugrappa is an outsider to the district, the Congress-JD(S) alliance has pulled out all stops and one-time bitter rivals Siddaramaiah and his mentor, the former prime minister HD Deve Gowda, united to try and prove that a broad coalition could defeat the BJP ahead of the 2019 elections.
Controversy has not been far away in the campaign, with personal attacks against leaders marking a new low in the state. Earlier in the week, Reddy said Siddaramaiah’s elder son had died as divine punishment for the latter having kept him away from his children.
Meanwhile, Sreeramulu claimed on Thursday that Siddaramaiah did not speak very good Kannada, which the former chief minister ridiculed, asking Sreeramulu if he knew the history of the letters used in the language.
The BJP is also attempting to save face after the embarrassment it faced elsewhere in Ramanagara, where its candidate L Chandrashekar, a Congress rebel, announced on Thursday that he would go back to the Congress. The BJP is also looking for revenge after the Congress won six of the nine assembly constituencies in the district in the May assembly elections.
