Observer visit today,heat on Gowda

The Yeddyurappa faction is nudging for replacement of Gowda with a Lingayat leader like Jagadish Shettar as CM in a projected strategy to protect the Lingayat vote base of the party.

Caste line fissures in the ruling BJP party in Karnataka have come to the fore again,ahead of a visit by the partys state in-charge Dharmendra Pradhan to Bangalore on Thursday.

During his visit,supporters of former chief minister B S Yeddyurappa are set to seek the replacement of Chief Minister D V Sadananda Gowda in what is projected as a move to protect the core vote base of the BJP in the form of the dominant Lingayat community to which Yeddyurappa belongs.

The Yeddyurappa faction which had the support of 65 of the 121 BJP MLAs when it voted for Gowda,a Vokkaliga community member,to become chief minister in August 2011,is now pushing the BJP national leadership to convene a meeting of the legislators of the party to initiate a leadership change.

The Yeddyurappa faction is nudging for replacement of Gowda with a Lingayat leader like Jagadish Shettar as CM in a projected strategy to protect the Lingayat vote base of the party. The group has already made several vocal demands for replacement of Gowda,including one led by Public Works Minister C M Udasi on June 18 when a deadline of June 30 was set by a largely Lingayat group of MLAs.

With Yeddyurappa facing a plethora of corruption cases from his time as CM between 2008 and 2010,his supporters have proposed Rural Development Minister Jagadish Shettar.

The BJP state president K S Eshwarappa,a member of the backward caste Kuruba community,has however queered the pitch a bit by lobbying with the Yeddyurappa group for their support to make him the CM instead of Shettar.

The BJP state president has suggested to Yeddyurappa in talks held this week that choosing Shettar as the CM candidate to replace Gowda would only result in Yeddyurappa losing his primacy as the leader of the Lingayat community in Karnataka.

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The BJP state president has hinted at rallying MLAs from the backward castes to support his candidature to be the CM for the next one year.

The Lingayats make up 17 per cent of the population of Karnataka,followed by the Vokkaligas at 15 per cent. The combined backward classes of which the Kurubas are an important chunk make up about 33 per cent of the population.

The main accusation that is being brought against CM Sadananda Gowda for his replacement by the Lingayat group is that the CM has grown increasingly closer to Vokkaliga strongman and president of the Janata Dal Secular party H D Deve Gowda.