BS Yediyurappa, son fall in line as BJP leadership gets poll boost

On Sunday, Vijayendra, who was in Delhi on the eve of the poll results, told reporters in Hubbali that he is not interested in becoming a minister in the current BJP government in Karnataka.

This is in contradiction to reports that Vijayendra, a vice-president of the state BJP, was in Delhi last week to lobby with the top party leadership for a position in Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai’s Cabinet.

The 46-year-old BJP vice president has indicated that he would fall in line with the BJP’s plans to win the next Assembly elections and would not insist on being made a minister before the polls, sources close to Yediyurappa’s family said.

Vijayendra himself told reporters on Sunday that he was not exerting pressure on the party leadership to induct him into the state Cabinet. He claimed that his visit to Delhi to meet BJP national president J P Nadda was not to claim a minister’s position but to discuss organisational issues.

There is speculation that Yediyurappa’s son, who has played a behind-the-scenes role in the BJP government and was sometimes referred to as a Super CM when his father was in power between July 2019 and July 2021, may contest the next Assembly polls from the family borough of Shikaripura in Shimoga district, which is currently represented by his father.

Yediyurappa has meanwhile also indicated that he would not exercise a preference for a candidate for the post of the state BJP president, which is likely to see changes soon, in the run-up to the state polls that are due in a year, family sources said.

“He has said he would work towards bringing the party to power irrespective of who is put in charge of leading the party for the next polls,” a source said.

The BJP central leadership, which is riding the wave of its big victory in four states, is keen to move away from the traditional caste-based politics and to stamp its own brand of “Hindutva plus development” strategy – with Prime Minister Narendra Modi being the central focus of the party rather than local leaders with caste-based agendas.

The BJP is likely to replace state BJP president Nalin Kumar Kateel in the coming days with a candidate who fits the strategy of the party in the aftermath of the recent poll results. There is a sense that having a woman in a key leadership position in Karnataka can take the party beyond caste affiliations and attract a larger swath of voters to the party, a BJP leader said.

“Karnataka is ready to move beyond caste politics. This is the feeling in the BJP. This has already been demonstrated in the Lok Sabha polls of 2019, and the Mandya Lok Sabha election in 2019, where caste was ignored by voters,” a BJP leader said.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP won 25 of the 28 seats in Karnataka and in the Mandya seat, Sumalatha Ambarish, the wife of M H Ambarish, popular film star and former Congress MP, was able to win as a first-time contestant with no caste affiliations.

Upper hand

In the changed political atmosphere since the recent poll results in five states, the BJP central leadership has emerged in a position to dictate terms to caste-based leaders, such as Lingayat strongman Yediyurappa in Karnataka, leading to more deference to the party line among state-level leaders, BJP sources said.

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