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The Hubballi region of Kittur Karnataka was widely considered to be a fiefdom of the Shettar family for many decades. That reputation took a hit on Saturday as former Karnataka Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar lost the Hubli-Dharwad seat to Mahesh Tenginakai of the BJP by 34,289 votes, failing to make it to the Assembly for the first time since 1994.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) runs in the 67-year-old’s blood and he has been a part of the BJP since its Jan Sangh days. But after the BJP denied him a ticket from the seat, Shettar, a six-time MLA from the region, quit the party last month in the run-up to the elections. Shettar’s uncle Sadashiv Shettar was the first BJP member in the family — in its Jan Sangh avatar — to be elected to the Assembly in 1967 from the Hubli constituency. His father S S Shettar was a five-time councillor in the Hubli-Dharwad city corporation and served as the first Jan Sangh mayor of any city in southern India. The Shettars are from the dominant Lingayat caste community, who make up 20% of the population of the Hubballi region.
The current BJP MP from the Dharwad seat, Pralhad Joshi, a Brahmin, is considered to have relied heavily on Shettar’s clout to win since it was created in the pre-Narendra Modi era in 2009.
Shettar’s first electoral victory as a BJP candidate in 1994 from the erstwhile Hubli Rural Assembly seat was also a defeat by a margin of over 15,000 votes for current Basavaraj Bommai who was then in the Janata Dal. It was a constituency that Bommai’s father and former CM S R Bommai had been elected thrice between 1978 and 1985.
Shettar followed up the 1994 win with victories from the same constituency in 1999 and 2004. Since 2008, he had been representing Hubli-Dharwad Central. Shettar served as the revenue minister from February 2006 to October 2007 and as the Rural Development and Panchayati Raj minister from 2009 to 2012. He became the CM in 2012-’13 when the BJP needed a Lingayat face following the brief exit of Yediyurappa who formed the Karnataka Janata Paksha.
Shettar’s exit is widely believed to be an effort by some in the party to wrest control of the region from Shettar. Bommai, Joshi. and central BJP leaders from the state were believed to be behind it. Bommai, who had stayed away from Hubli politics for over two decades on account of the dominance of the Shettar-Joshi duo, reportedly tried to gain control in the region after becoming the CM in July 2021. Soon after Union Home Minister Amit Shah declared in 2021 that the Assembly polls would be fought under Bommai’s leadership, it triggered alarm bells among Lingayat leaders, including Shettar.
The former CM claimed the BJP leadership offered him a Rajya Sabha berth to get him to stay — some in the party said he was also offered a Union Minister post, but Shettar later dismissed it as “false news” — and that the party did not provide him with a reason for not nominating him. He later accused BJP national general secretary B L Santhosh of manoeuvering to deny him the ticket and told The Indian Express in an interview that Tenginakai, who was given the ticket, was “the blue-eyed boy of Santhosh”.
According to sources in the BJP, one of the reasons Shettar was denied a ticket is that his brother Pradeep was made an MLC in 2021. At the time, the veteran leader was informed that he would in all likelihood be dropped for the Assembly polls. He consented to this arrangement, according to these party insiders. But, the former CM told The Indian Express in an interview.
