THE pujari (priest) can withhold a boon bestowed by the gods," is a popular Kannada adage. For former Karnataka chief minister S. Bangarappa, it is a cruel aphorism that came true, literally, at the most inopportune juncture—right when battlelines for the Lok Sabha polls were being drawn with the end of the deadline for withdrawal of nominations.
According to Bangarappa, desperate efforts to bring about a merger of his two-year-old Karnataka Congress Party (KCP) and the Congress were scuttled at the last minute by a Congress priest: Janardhan Poojary. Having deserted the idea of aligning with the National Front to pursue a line of rapprochement with the only "stable and secular party" (read Congress), the man who merrily ate away into Congress votes and was largely responsible for its poor third place in the 1994 assembly elections today finds himself—and his party—politically isolated, facing the threat of being decimated in an entirely different ballot game.
It was indeed a dramatic turnaround last month, when the KCP decided to dump the party executive's resolution to forge an alliance with the National Front and respond to feelers from the Congress for an alliance or a merger in Karnataka. For, not long ago, KCP president Bangarappa had used the choicest epithets for AICC President and Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, calling him among other things a "scorpion". The badminton player and former chief minister had proclaimed: "Our party will have nothing to do with the BJP or the Congress headed by Narasimha Rao." But when he backtracked, Bangarappa had an explanation: "The National Front no longer exists. This is not what I'm saying, these are the words of senior Janata Dal leaders. Only the Congress can keep the BJP out of power."
Bangarappa got very close to doing a prodigal son—by forging an alliance with the parent Congress. Senior Congress leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad, Madhavsinh Solanki, Sharad Pawar, Buta Singh, Jitendra Prasada, Suresh Kalmadi and former Goa chief minister Pratap Singh Rane were, according to Bangarappa, deputed by Rao to invite him (Bangarappa) to return home. Says he: "I never approached anybody. It was they who approached me." And what lured Bangarappa, according to a source close to him, was the realisation that if anyone could save his skin in the CBI investigation in the Classik Computer embezzlement case, it was the Congress.
Bangarappa visited Delhi to talk to senior Congress managers who had express directions from Rao to extract a merger of the KCP with the Congress. Enter Janardhan Poojary. And Bangarappa set his terms for the merger—he sought five Lok Sabha seats of the total 28 in the state. Poojary, the AICC general secretary and Congress candidate from Mangalore who belongs to the same backward community of toddy tappers as Bangarappa, prevailed upon a flexible Rao to insist on a merger according to the terms set by another Karnataka Congress veteran who did not want to be named. He claimed Bangarappa would be a threat to his (Poojary's) backward class following in the party. Rao's managers, however, did not break the news to Bangarappa till the end of withdrawal of nominations because they did not want him to go running back to the Janata Dal-National Front.
"It is not me who has lost. The Congress will realise its blunder when the results are out," Bangarappa told Outlook, confident that his party would do well in the 11 constituencies where the KCP has fielded candidates. Bangarappa is contesting from Shimoga, where he is pitted against his brother-in-law and sitting Congress MP K.G. Shivappa. While Bangarappa's confidence stems from the fact that the KCP polled seven per cent of the votes and won 10 seats in the 1994 assembly elections, political observers say the party's appeal has dwindled to a large extent since.
Says Veerappa Moily, former chief minister: "The raid on the Nadwa college in Lucknow and the novelty of the KCP weaned away some Muslim and backward class votes from the Congress and helped it win 10 seats in 1994. The situation has changed now." Agrees his predecessor Ramakrishna Hegde: "The KCP was new in 1994 and the people were curious. Now the people have lost interest in that party." Which, incidentally, was apparent in the local body elections earlier this year when the KCP won a paltry 65 of the nearly 1,000 seats it had contested all over the state. At Shimoga, the party managed to win four of the 134 seats.
Says Bangarappa: "The Lok Sabha elections are totally different. It will show that Bangarappa is Bangarappa. A different kind of politician." But the arrogant tenor fails to hide his anxiety. For he knows that it will be an achievement if he wins from Shimoga and enters Parliament to shake hands with his Congress friends.
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