BSY may have jumped gun on a BJP-JD(S) tie-up, but parties are inching together

“The BJP and the JD(S) will form an alliance. Amit Shah has agreed to give four Lok Sabha seats (to the JD(S)). This will strengthen us in a big way. It will facilitate wins in 25 to 26 Lok Sabha seats in Karnataka,” Yediyurappa said amid speculation that Deve Gowda held meetings with Shah and BJP president J P Nadda during a recent visit to Delhi. He added he would be meeting Deve Gowda and Kumaraswamy to take the alliance forward.

Gowda is reported to have met Shah and Nadda during a visit to Delhi on September 4 after speaking on the phone with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with whom he enjoys a cordial relationship.

JD(S) sources said the revelation of the alliance was premature since some of the finer details are yet to be worked out at the party level. The JD(S) is set to hold a meeting of leaders and office-bearers on September 10 and a formal announcement on the BJP alliance is expected by September 13 in a subsequent meeting of party leaders.

“We don’t know why this has come out today since things are still under consideration and nothing has been finalised yet. There are talks of going for an internal alliance rather than an overt alliance. It is still at an immature stage,” a JD(S) source said.

Deve Gowda and Kumaraswamy did not comment on the alliance announcement by Yediyurappa. Deve Gowda, 90, said on social media that he would not be attending a G20 dinner being hosted by President Droupadi Murmu in New Delhi on Saturday for “health reasons”.

The JD(S) core committee chief and former minister G T Deve Gowda said that many leaders in the party were of the view at a recent meeting that the JD(S) should ally with the BJP “for its survival in the long run”.

Senior BJP leaders in Karnataka Pralhad Joshi and C T Ravi denied knowledge of a proposed alliance with the JD(S). The Independent MP from Mandya Sumalatha Ambarish, who is allied with the BJP, also said she was unaware of an alliance.

Out of the four Lok Sabha seats where the JD(S) is looking to field candidates in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the Mandya seat is seen as the most contentious on account of the BJP backing the sitting MP for a second term. Mandya is considered central to the politics of the JD(S), which is predominantly a party of the Vokkaliga community in the region.

The three other seats likely to be shared if there is an alliance that are less contentious are Chikaballapur, Bengaluru Rural and Hassan – the home borough of Deve Gowda. All the seats likely to be shared with the JD(S) are in south Karnataka, where the party has a strong base on account of the support enjoyed by Deve Gowda and Kumaraswamy.  

In response to the news of the BJP-JD(S) alliance, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said: “Whether they fight in an alliance or as an individual party we are not bothered. We will ask the people for votes, the people are in favour of the Congress and they will vote for us.”

Karnataka Congress president and Deputy CM D K Shivakumar said: “I do not know what will become of their (the JD-S’s) secular ideology. I do not know if the party will survive or collapse, it is left to them. They have built the party on an ideology, we do not know what will become of their MLAs, ex MLAs.”

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP had won 52% of the votes and 25 of the 28 seats in Karnataka, riding on the crest of a wave in favour of Modi. The Congress had got 32% of the votes and one seat, and the JD(S) 10% and one seat.

In the 2023 Karnataka Assembly polls, the Congress won 43% of the votes and 135 seats in the 224-member state legislature, while the BJP secured 36% of the votes and 66 seats, and the JD(S) 13% of the votes and 19 seats. The performance in the 2023 polls was the worst by the JD(S) since 1999, when a split in the party cost the erstwhile Janata Dal dearly in the polls.

By allying with the BJP, the JD(S) is hoping to stay alive as a regional party in Karnataka amid a growing footprint in the state for the Congress and the BJP. The JD(S) has the advantage of being dominant in the south Karnataka region, where the BJP is yet to get a foothold without strong leaders from the Vokkaliga community.

By allying with the JD(S), the BJP would be undoing its own recent futile efforts to create a Hindutva base in the Vokkaliga districts for the sake of acquiring a broader vote base that is currently available to the JD(S) in south Karnataka.

The BJP and JD(S) were in an alliance to form the government in Karnataka from 2006-2007 but have never had an overt alliance for the polls. In the 2018 Assembly polls the two parties are believed to have had a tacit understanding against the ruling Congress. The polls delivered a split verdict and the JD(S) was briefly in power in a Congress alliance with Kumaraswamy as the CM before the alliance was toppled by exits of sitting MLAs to the BJP.

Two months ago there had been speculation that the JD(S) had been asked to merge with the BJP by the BJP leadership, which Deve Gowda had rejected before declaring in late July that the JD(S) will fight the 2024 Lok Sabha polls independently but would work with the BJP to combat the Congress in the Karnataka legislature.

The move by the JD(S) in late July to stay independent of the BJP was seen in political circles as being impractical on account of the JD(S) having few resources to keep the party together until the 2028 Assembly polls after the big loss in the 2023 polls.

The JD(S) however faced the prospects of a split in the event of a merger with the BJP – many of the 19 JD(S) MLAs in the Karnataka legislature depend on Muslim votes to win their respective constituencies.

The JD(S) has also found itself pushed outside the INDIA alliance on account of opposition to their inclusion by Congress leaders like Siddarmaiah and Shivakumar, who are in a direct political battle with the JD(S) in south Karnataka, where the BJP has a negligible presence despite all exertions.

“We will fight independently,” Deve Gowda had stated in July about the possibility of the JD(S) allying with the BJP or the INDIA bloc.

“When we had three seats, Manmohan Singh approached us and said he needed our support and we extended support. In the interest of a stable government in the country we will decide according to the situation that emerges at a particular moment in history. The party will decide,” Gowda said in July.