Yeddyurappa Is Whom The BJP* Wants In Karnataka

Four years ago, BS Yeddyurappa was the man who had led the BJP to power in a southern state and who, smeared by a mining scam, was on his way out of the party. Now, armed with an acquittal in the corruption case, he's firmly back where he left off: as the man the BJP is looking to for a win again in Karnataka.

Yeddyurappa, and his two sons, were on Wednesday acquitted by a special CBI court of the charges of receiving illegal gratification for showing favour to steelmaker JSW on two counts – not insisting on recovering alleged losses caused to a state-run mining firm through a joint venture contract and also by bringing in a ban on iron-ore export.

The CBI was ordered to investigate the case by the Supreme Court and it filed a chargesheet in 2012, naming 13 people, including the company representatives, as accused and detailing two transactions as quid-pro-quo for the favours – a Rs 20 crore land sale by Yeddyurappa's sons and a Rs 10 crore donation to an educational trust run by his family. All the accused have been acquitted of the charges.

The BJP state president has now cleared most of the cases against him. “There is not only relief, our cadre is feeling energised,” says the BJP's Karnataka spokesman Suresh Kumar. Meanwhile, Rajya Sabha member Subramanian Swamy tweeted his view that Yeddyurappa had been framed by 'an unholy conspiracy hatched in Delhi' by the mining mafia 'to soil his reputation so that the way could be cleared for them for achieving their political aims'.

Yeddyurappa quit the party in 2012, a year after the mining scandal cost him the Chief Minister's post , to put together a regional outfit that is seen to have hurt the BJP's seat tally in the 2013 state elections. He was back in the BJP a few months later. “He has quite often proved that the party requires him in Karnataka,” says political commentator Sandeep Shastri. 

Yeddyurappa took over as the BJP's state chief in April this year and the party has been mounting vocal campaigns in recent months against the ruling Congress which has been tumbling from one controversy onto another. The BJP, in July, staged an all night sit-in in the legislative assembly demanding minister K J George's resignation, a sort of payback for Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's tactics as an opposition leader in 2010 at the height of the mining scam.

“With this verdict, he (Yeddyurappa) is going to be politically much stronger,” says Sandeep Shastri. He reckons it could give the party a boost but with a few riders. “It's a personal victory for him and it's a huge challenge for the party,” Shastri says, explaining that the inner dynamics will likely be tested now.

Already, there has been a bout of rumbling within the party unit as Yeddyurappa took control of party appointments earlier this year. Many observers also feel that BJP leader K S Eshwarappa's much publicised plans to woo the backward classes and Dalits with a separate unit was partly aimed at the Lingayat strongman's dominance even though the idea, ostensibly, was to counter Siddaramaiah's AHINDA (a Kannada acronym for minorities backward classes and dalits) focus.

Yeddyurappa, who didn't hide his displeasure at the plan, has been organising rallies too. Last week, the party held a convention of scheduled tribes at Lingasugur in north Karnataka and there are plans for a backward classes convention in November. 

Suresh Kumar, however, says the issues within the party, particularly with Eshwarappa's proposed Sangolli Rayanna brigade, are a closed chapter. “Eshwarappa has himself said it's an apolitical movement and that our one-point programme is to bring BJP to power,” he says, adding: “We know that Yeddyurappa is the best mass leader that we have.”