A party in crisis

The BJP's image takes another beating in Karnataka as its leaders battle for power.

in Bangalore

Once known as the party with a difference for its commitment to ideology and discipline, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has become, in Karnataka, the party with only differences, thanks to its top leaders' uncontrolled appetite for power. Chief Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda admits as much. Since his surprise appointment last July, he has, by his own confession, been trying to speed up development but the effort does not seem to get him or his party anywhere.

Factions within the State unit have been at loggerheads with each other ever since May 2008, when the saffron party came to power for the first time in a southern State. But in recent weeks the din of dissidence has reached a crescendo. The infighting has shown up in an area that hurts most: the elections. The BJP in Karnataka, despite all the infighting, had won almost all byelections after coming to power, some of which were forced by the party's Operation Lotus, in which legislators from the opposition were wooed out of their parties and made to contest on the BJP ticket. In recent months, that invincibility has begun to take a beating. The biggest shock came in the March 18 election for the Udipi-Chikamagalur parliamentary seat, which had been vacated by Sadananda Gowda. The Congress wrested it from the BJP, an unexpected outcome given the BJP's popularity in the Malnad/coastal belt of Karnataka. Last December, the party lost the Bellary Assembly byelection.

The latest internal battle in the BJP started with former Chief Minister and Lingayat community strongman B.S. Yeddyurappa's demand that he be reinstated in the top post. He was forced to resign in July 2011 after he was indicted and criminal proceedings under the Prevention of Corruption Act were recommended against him by the Karnataka Lokayukta (ombudsman) in its report on the multi-billion-dollar illegal iron ore mining scam. Yeddyurappa protested loudly but eventually bowed to the diktat of the party high command. Now he claims that BJP president Nitin Gadkari had promised to reinstate him if his name was cleared. The Karnataka High Court did just that in its March 7 verdict (see box).

Yeddyurappa has been swinging between belligerence and avowals of loyalty to the party. He held a rally in Hubli on March 11, gathered MLAs loyal to him at a resort, and hinted that he would quit the party.

On his part, Sadananda Gowda has said that it is for the party's national leadership to take a decision and that he is an obedient servant who would do whatever the party wanted. But the party is not prepared to act; it prefers instead to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. While it has not asked Sadananda Gowda to step aside, it has also not ruled out Yeddyurappa's return; it has asked him to wait. Insiders say this indecisiveness is hurting the party. A senior Minister said: The central leadership should take a decision either way and take responsibility for it. Either reinstate Yeddyurappa or tell him categorically it won't. People are fed up with the indecision and infighting. Our image has also gone down very badly.

On March 22, after almost a fortnight of acerbic press statements from rival camps, anti-party activities, and cloak-and-dagger meetings in Bangalore's hotels and outlying resorts, Sadananda Gowda and Yeddyurappa, along with their retinues, flew to New Delhi and met Gadkari separately. Sadananda Gowda said he apprised the leadership on the shameful goings-on in the State unit. He told Frontline that the time had come for the party to initiate disciplinary action against those indulging in anti-party activities.

The Chief Minister said: In meetings with L.K. Advani, Gadkari, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, M.M. Joshi and Rajnath Singh, I explained what has been happening in Karnataka the Udipi byelection result, the resort politics, the anti-party activities by some leaders, the anti-government and anti-party statements during the condolence meeting held after the death of V.S. Acharaya [a State Minister], and the scandal involving three of our Ministers who were allegedly watching sleazy videos in the Assembly but whose action was supported by some leaders. There are also some new entrants to the party [who came in during Operation Lotus] who occupy high positions in the Cabinet and issue statements against me. The central leadership has to initiate some disciplinary action, otherwise it will be difficult to run the government and the party. For seven months I have tried my best, and some development has taken place though not at a fast pace. He asserted that the central leadership had made no mention of a change of guard in the State.

Infighting in the ruling dispensation in Karnataka is not new. In the early 1990s, the Congress regime of M. Veerappa Moily, currently Union Minister for Corporate Affairs, was plagued by the feud between Moily and S.M. Krishna, now Minister for External Affairs. What makes it worse in the case of the BJP is that the infighting is largely caste-driven. The party that has been trying to live down its communal reputation finds itself engulfed by the equally embarrassing stigma of casteism.

For decades, politics in Karnataka has been dominated by caste equations. Leaders from the two dominant communities, the Lingayats and the Vokkaligas, corner most of the political space, ensuring that no government is stable without their support. The recent feuding in the BJP has brought these deep-rooted caste animosities in the polity into the open. While Yeddyurappa is certainly the tallest Lingayat leader at present, Sadananda Gowda, a Vokkaliga, has been pitchforked to the limelight because of his elevation as Chief Minister.

Political commentators blame the rise of casteism on people who unjustifiably attributed the party's good showing in the 2008 Assembly elections to the personality of Yeddyurappa and the support given by the Lingayats. This, they aver, led to the twin problems of sycophancy and casteism. One Minister said: We should remember that the people voted for the BJP, not Yeddyurappa or the Lingayats. In 2004, we won 79 seats without projecting Yeddyurappa. It is time the national leadership chose between protecting its first ever government in southern India and upholding what is left of party discipline.

There is little doubt that Yeddyurappa was the BJP's star campaigner, and he still is the party's biggest bet in Karnataka. But three years of power have changed the loyal, quiet, faceless party worker who without a murmur would carry out the party's every bidding. Yeddyurappa rose from being a back-room boy to the party's poster boy to the Chief Minister and ultimately the party's State unit leader. Along with power came allegations of corruption, nepotism, and defiance of the high command's diktats.

By the time Yeddyurappa was indicted by the Lokayukta report, he had spun out of control and turned from being a popular and indispensable leader to a millstone that the party could ill afford to carry. How could it attack the United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre over corruption charges when the party's only Chief Minister in the South was facing serious allegations of corruption? All of Yeddyurappa's protestations of innocence fell on deaf ears. Yeddyurappa also faced a series of criminal/corruption cases, including alleged oversight in land denotification processes, with cases still pending before the Special Lokayukta and other courts. He also spent time in jail.

Yeddyurappa's confidants confess that he never reconciled himself to his removal as Chief Minister. He is still the most influential Lingayat leader in the State. But with other cases still pending against him, the BJP top brass seems to be in no hurry.

A senior Minister said: Yeddyurappa should do what Sharad Pawar did. Come out of the BJP and maybe support the party from outside. That way the BJP cannot take him for granted. He is still the BJP's biggest leader in Karnataka.

But how many legislators would be prepared to stand by him if he did that? Ministers such as Jagadish Shettar, Basavaraj Bommai, V. Somanna and C.M. Udasi are prepared to back him, but they have made it clear that they will do so only from within the party.

Another senior Minister said that while Yeddyurappa's exit would damage the party, it would also damage his own support base. He recalled that former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh was at one time considered the party's prime ministerial candidate but the moment he stepped out of the BJP he lost his support base. In Karnataka, too, leaders of the stature of Devaraj Urs, R. Gundu Rao and S. Bangarappa lost out politically when they stepped out of the Congress and tried to form their own parties.

Despite all the political turmoil, commentators do not expect the Assembly to be dissolved. Legislators cutting across party lines are not in favour of this, and neither the Congress nor the Janata Dal (Secular) is prepared for an election right now.

While the Congress is a divided house, with its three main pillars, Krishna, Moily and Union Minister for Labour Mallikarjuna Kharge away in Delhi, the Janata Dal (S) continues to be a one-family party.