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Journalism of Courage
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, and veteran BJP leader B S Yediyurappa will be the three faces that will lead the campaign for the Karnataka Assembly polls scheduled for May 10. The Karnataka campaign material prominently highlights the faces of Modi, national BJP president J P Nadda, Bommai, Yediyurappa, and state BJP president Nalin Kateel.
Sources in the party said the leadership might refrain from announcing a chief ministerial candidate owing to the lack of confidence in the cohesiveness of the state unit and the caste and power equations at play in the state. They, however, added that if the party won a majority under Bommai he would continue at the top post.
The BJP is walking on a tightrope in the coming elections, with the leadership admitting that Bommai has not been able to win the confidence of the Lingayat community in the manner that his predecessor Yediyurappa did. With Yediyurappa continuing to be the unquestioned leader of the Lingayat community, the BJP is forced to keep him at the forefront to retain its support base among the community, the sources said.
Party sources said Bommai, on the other hand, “successfully saw through the completion of several big infrastructure projects including the Shivamogga airport, the Bengaluru-Mysuru expressway”.
The Karnataka election is a test for the BJP given that other key states will also go to polls later this year. It has to ward off anti-incumbency and consolidate its support base to retain power. Moreover, the countdown to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections has begun and this will be top of the mind for its leaders and strategists.
After the announcement of the poll schedule on Wednesday, Nadda, while talking to The Indian Express, emphasised that the focus would be on the party’s developmental agenda. “The development-oriented politics of the BJP will defeat the negative agenda of the Congress. We have the people’s support, we have support at the grassroots level. The BJP government focused on HIRA — Highways, Internet, Railways, and Airport — in the five years and took the state forward,” he said.
As per sources in the BJP, the Bommai government’s decision to scrap the four per cent reservation granted to the Muslim community under the “2B” backward class category and shift them to the quota pool of the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) “could help the BJP consolidate the Hindu votes”.
However, sources admitted that declaring the chief ministerial face in the run-up to the elections “would not be a good idea”, with the BJP struggling to win a slice of votes from the Vokkaligas, Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) to retain power in the state. But if the party wins the May 10 election it “will not be in a position to disregard the Lingayat support”, they said, adding that “currently the BJP does not have any other prominent Lingayat face other than Bommai to be the chief minister”.
If the party does not win majority and is in a situation where it has to seek the support of smaller parties, the scenario will be different, according to party insiders. “In fact, the latest pattern is that there is no major projection of the CM candidate. Except in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, the party did not enthusiastically declare a single face. However, when the party won, we continued with the incumbent chief ministers in Tripura, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa,” a party leader said.
In the 2021 Assam elections, however, the party replaced Sarbananda Sonowal with Himanta Biswa Sarma after returning to power. “But the situation was different. Himanta was part of the Sonowal government and ran the show. His role in the party’s victory could not be ignored,” said the leader.
