Yediyurappa stamp on BJP first list: No major shake-up in Karnataka, party goes the tried-and-tested way

Only nine incumbent legislators have been dropped for fresh faces. Uncertainty prevails over the future of as many as 11 sitting MLAs whose names do not feature in the first list, including veterans such as Jagadish Shettar, K S Eshwarappa, S A Ramdas, M P Kumaraswamy, Nehru Olekar, and Madal Virupakshappa. The last two face corruption charges.

Five of the new picks are women candidates, with the party naming eight women in total in the first list. It is two more than the number of women in the Congress’s first list. The BJP has given no seats to Muslim and Christian candidates, while the Congress has given 11 and two seats respectively so far.

Like in 2018, the BJP gave a majority of its tickets in the first list — 51 — to the Lingayat community that forms the bulwark of caste support for the party. In 2018, 55 seats were given to the Lingayats when the party was operating under the leadership of B S Yediyurappa who is the party’s tallest leader from the Lingayat community.

Yediyurappa’s stamp is also evident in the list on account of tickets being given to his son B Y Vijayendra and as many as 12 hardcore supporters, apart from 14 persons (including 12 MLAs) who were lured from the Congress and the JD(S) by the BJP to help Yediyurappa become the CM in 2019.

BJP sources said it was inevitable for all the defectors to be given tickets since the party used their services to come to power and it would send the wrong signal if they were denied tickets amid allegations of widespread corruption behind their induction.

The Congress, which has named 166 candidates in two lists, has given tickets to 42 Lingayats so far. The party gave 43 tickets to the electorally dominant community in 2018. While the BJP has given Vokkaligas — the second-most dominant community — 41 seats so far, while the Congress has fielded 33 Vokkaligas.

On Wednesday morning, Yediyurappa was felicitated by supporters for landing seats for his support group in the first list. Yediyurappa had been bargaining hard to retain his primacy in the party and there was speculation earlier that he was unhappy with the seat distribution.

The BJP veteran indicated several times that only five to six of the sitting MLAs would lose their seats even as others suggested that as many as 30 sitting MLAs would lose out.

“I am very, very happy. All the suggestions given by me have been accepted. I am sure we will get a full majority based on the seat selection,” Yediyurappa said on Monday after hurriedly returning from Delhi. The former CM did not accede to the party’s demand to field his son Vijayendra from Varuna against former CM Siddaramaiah and the party, in the end, opted to field V Somanna, a Lingayat veteran against the Congress heavyweight.

Among Yediyurappa supporters who have got tickets are Siddu Savadi, Suresh Gowda, M P Renukacharya, Tammesh Gowda, C K Ramamurthy, B P Harish, and Saptagiri Gowda, BJP insiders said.

The BJP has poured huge amounts of funds into the constituencies of its sitting MLAs over the last four years to cement their places in the respective regions. The 14 former Congress and JD(S) MLAs who have been given BJP tickets are reported to have been provided with a lion’s share of resources that they would be expected to return during the polls.

In February, the BJP state president Nalin Kumar Kateel said the BJP government had provided Rs 1000 crore of funds for the development of party constituencies in the state.

“If we connect the beneficiaries of the various schemes of the government with the party then there is no question of the BJP losing the polls. We have a plan,” BJP national general secretary C T Ravi said two months ago.

“We have a list of the beneficiaries of government schemes and we have to work on the data to connect them to the party. If we remind them of the benefits they have got then that is enough for us to succeed,” he said.

“This time there is an intent to bring about a newness. There have been a lot of discussions from the lowest level and decisions have been taken. In the first list, it is clear that BJP will win. The Congress and JDS have released their first list and when we compare we can see that the BJP will win a majority from the first list of 189 itself,” Karnataka CM Bommai said.

“Many of those who are being changed have also been spoken to and what are the reasons and what action will be taken. We are telling people when the circumstances require it,” Bommai said. There have been signs of rebellion from at least three BJP leaders who have been left out or told that they will be left out like the veteran MLAs Jagadish Shettar and K S Eshwarappa, and MLCs Laxman Savadi and R Shankar.