National

Three Falls Of A Tripod

All three key parties are rickety. Only, the last jolted was the BJP.

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Three Falls Of A Tripod
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The demise of the week-old B S Yeddyurappa government on November 19 has prompted the saffron party to reel out words that blend with 'black'—'black day', 'blackmail' and 'black magic'. With these, they are painting themselves as victims of Gowda's skulduggery. The JD(S),it says, offered it unconditional support, then made unreasonable demands and pulled the plug. Yeddyurappaeven claims the Gowdas sought the services of evil tantriks to cast a fatal spell on him.

Whatever, Karnataka's first BJP chief minister should be feeling cheated. But his party also has a lot of answering to do. What is it that compelled the BJP central leadership to embrace the JD(S) despite no power transfer having happened early October—the originally prescribedtime? It is reliably learnt that the RSS too was keen on the re-alliance and religious pontiffs like the Vishweshwara Thirta Swamiji of the Ayodhya fame, had directly got down to deal-making. People in the know say that it was not just plain emotion of opening an account for the party in South India, but a lot of business interests and fund-raising overlapped ideological motives.

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That perhaps explains Yeddyurappa's tearing hurry to take decisions that had huge financial implications. In the very first cabinet meeting—with no alliance partners and when he still had to face a trust vote—the CM allotted contracts to a friendly infrastructure firm. The BJP's insistence that the Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise (NICE) carry out the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor project was bound to spell trouble: Gowda always strongly disapproved of nice. The BJP was also protective of the party's Bellary unit, knowing that it wasa mining-related bribe allegation and a murder charge hurled by two of its Bellary legislators against just-vacated CM H.D. Kumaraswamy that had ruptured relations with his JD(S). Outlook has also reliably learnt that the day before he quit, Yeddyurappa cleared as many as 24 new distilleries.

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On the ideological front, the BJP's enthusiasm was evident when it broke conventions to hold an elaborate pooja in the chief minister'schamber in Vidhana Soudha on the day Yeddyurappa was sworn in. Narendra Modi attending the swearing-in function made an open-endedstatement that Karnataka should follow "Gujarat's development model. "Within hours after being sworn in Yeddyurappa filled up the entire CMO with his Lingayat clan-mates. He brought in as intelligence chief another Lingayat and old-Gowda baiter, Shankar Bidri. These were all seen as "provocations" by the JD(S). Prior to all this, Yeddyurappa as finance minister had made an arbitrary budgetary allocation of Rs 250 crores to various Hindu religious maths and organisations. BJP insiders admit that Yeddyurappa may not last long at the top, not just because he "embarrassed" the party to fulfill his "personal ambitions," but also because the Gowda family will go after him for the public utterances he has been making against them.

If BJP is in a quandary about its hasty deeds, the JD(S) is caught in a spiral of "treachery" that it may find difficult to escape in the near future. At present, public trust for the party is zero. One look at the 'letters to the editor' column of local newspapers proves that Gowda and sons have become symbols of "deceit" and "villainy." Top sources revealed that many JD(S) MLAs urged the Congress to bail the mout by forming a government. Kumaraswamy himself has been tactically distancing himself from his father to secure his own political future. He has casually floated the idea of a regional party, which would keep all his other family members away. But this statement is being read as a move to quell the growing dissension within the party. Kumaraswamy's own party members say that he suffers from a "delusion" that he was avery popular chief minister and he can get away from his father's "crimes" by distancing himself from the family.

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The JD(S) MLAs are "frustrated" because even if a good majority of them had broken away to escape the anti-defection Bill and form a government with the Congress, Gowda could still get after them because there was an earlier disqualification case pending before the Assembly speaker. This case pertained to Kumaraswamy and his followers when they broke away in January 2006 to form a government with the BJP, apparently without Gowda's permission. So, if at all a government had to be formed in Karnataka with Congress support, then it could not have happened without Gowda's blessings. Gowda had kept this disqualification case pending to keep a check on his son and his loyalists.

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Finally, the Congress. It has been a divided house. There is not a single leader in the state Congress who has mass appeal, stature and backing of the various party lobbies locally and in Delhi. There are as many as 12 serious contenders for the CM's post if the party were to come to power. There is also this turf war happening between old Congressmen and the ones who have newly arrived (mostly crossed over from Gowda's party). The newly arrived like Siddaramaiah, B L Shankar, Ramesh Kumar, R V Deshpande and others have a pathological hatred for Deve Gowda and do not want the Congress to do business with JD(S) at any cost. Their personal beliefs have prevented the party from taking a considered and a pragmatic view of various issues in the past. Gowda had also held this group responsible for bringing down the Dharam Singh government. This group is also said to have the backing of S M Krishna. So, whenever there has been a crisis in the state, it is this group that has urged S M Krishna to stage a come back to state politics. An old Congressman asked: "What will this group do if there is a hung verdict in the next election too and we have no choice but to strike an alliance with JD(S)? After all, there are no permanent enemies in politics."

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In the last 20 months, even as an Opposition party the Congress didvery little to expose the Kumaraswamy government or the communal politics of the BJP. As an unstated strategy it allowed the coalition partners to fight amongst themselves, but never did anything to build pressure inside and outside the state Assembly. Even when the state was hit by natural calamities there was no forceful submissions on behalf of the common man to pressure the sitting government. In all, it has been rudderless.

Another odd reality that confronts the Congress is that people like Veerappa Moily, Margaret Alva, Oscar Fernandes, B K Hari prasad and Janardhan Poojary among others who are active at the national level, have a very slim chance at the hustings. They do not also belong to any of the state's major communities. Interestingly, all these leaders are from coastal Karnataka, where the BJP has a strangle hold. So the big question is what who will the party pick to lead them in the impending elections? The toss up could be between S M Krishna and Siddaramaiah, who belong to the major Vokkaliga and third largest Kuruba communities respectively. But the question is will Krishna be brought back and can he stand Gowda's assault or will an eccentric newcomer like Siddaramaiah be crowned? The only good thing that the Congress has done in the past couple of weeks is to appoint Krishna ByreGowda, a credible face, as the Youth Congress president.

The greatest challenge, however, before all three parties in the state is to get the common man to trust the political and democratic process again.

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