Karnataka: Sons of three former CMs in fray for Shimoga Lok Sabha seat

The three sons have been politically active for a while and have been elected to public offices in elections, but are still dependent on the political legacy of their fathers to win elections.

The Shimoga bypoll was necessitated by the resignation of state BJP chief Yeddyurappa after he won the state polls in May this year. The contest now is essentially between Yeddyurappa’s son Raghavendra, a former MP, and Madhu Bangarappa, a former MLA and son of the socialist and backward classes leader of the region S Bangarappa. Mahima’s presence is not expected to have a bearing on the main poll battle.

The last time there was straight a fight between a Bangarappa and a Yeddyurappa family member for the Shimoga seat was in 2009, when the veteran Bangarappa stood on a Congress ticket and battled the then CM Yeddyurappa’s older son Raghavendra and lost by just 52,000 votes. In 2014, three years after Bangarappa’s death, Yeddyurappa won Shimoga for the BJP on the back of the Narendra Modi wave, defeating his nearest Congress and JDS rivals by a margin of 3.6 lakh votes.

The BJP is widely seen as having an edge in the November 3 bypolls on account of the caste constituencies nurtured by Yeddyurappa in recent years. However, with the Congress agreeing to back JD(S) candidate Madhu and with the legacy of Bangarappa being invoked in the campaign, a close fight is on the cards.

With the bypoll being scheduled barely seven months before the general elections, it has become a prestige battle for the BJP and the Congress-JDS coalition. Yeddyurappa is keen on ensuring a victory for his son on home turf to not just humiliate the ruling coalition, which he calls “an unholy alliance”, but to remain in contention as CM in the event of the Congress-JDS coalition self-destructing after Lok Sabha polls.

Yeddyurappa aide and former minister Shobha Karandlaje, in the course of campaigning for the bypoll, stated that “Yeddyurappa will become the CM after the bypoll’’. This remark came even as another BJP leader pushed the name of Ballari Scheduled Tribe leader B Sreeramulu as the next CM candidate of the BJP.

The BJP and Yeddyurappa clearly enjoy the upper hand on two accounts —- the party won seven of the eight Assembly constituencies that make up the Shimoga Lok Sabha seat in May, and the constituency has a nearly 20 per cent Lingayat community population and another 20 per cent SCs and STs who have allied with the BJP in recent years.

Mahima Patel’s presence could be seen as spoiler for the BJP’s Lingayat votes, but locals tended to discount his political standing in the region.

The Congress-JDS coalition, on its part, is keen on defeating Yeddyurappa in Shimoga to preserve its credibility and ensure its survival in the run-up to Lok Sabha polls. The coalition is relying on tapping the backward classes and minority vote in the region, specifically the sizable Idiga community which has traditionally backed the Bangarappas, and on the fact that their combined strength could have given the BJP a close run in the May elections.

“If we (JDS-Congress) come together, we can make gains in vote share,’’ former prime minister and JDS president H D Deve Gowda said recently while announcing the joint effort to win the bypoll.

The BJP is looking at reducing the appeal of Madhu Bangarappa by deploying his older brother and rival Kumar Bangarappa, BJP MLA from Soraba seat in Shimoga, for campaigning among backward-class Idigas.