Road to 2024: As Yediyurappa is phased out, another regional satrap shrinks in BJP, frames its pre-poll challenge

In the early 2000s, when the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led coalition government was in power, many of these leaders were the party’s stars in both Houses of Parliament – including Rajnath Singh (Uttar Pradesh); Pramod Mahajan (a favourite of Vajpayee’s); Arun Jaitley (the eloquent legal mind, if not popular ground-level leader, who extricated the party out of many a situation, particularly with the Opposition); Sushma Swaraj (among its tallest women leaders); and M Venkaiah Naidu (the face from the south).

Other national leaders identified by Advani were Uma Bharti (a good orator and OBC leader) and Shahnawaz Hussain (the BJP’s minority face).

Apart from them, Advani-led BJP groomed Vasundhara Raje (Rajasthan), Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh), Raman Singh (Chhattisgarh), Manohar Parrikar (Goa), and Narendra Modi (Gujarat), who became powerful regional satraps in their respective states.

This constellation of leaders was also seen as reflective of a significant social engineering exercise, with a mix of upper castes, backwards, hardcore Hindutva advocates and moderate faces.

Among them, B S Yediyurappa, who brought the BJP to power for the first time in south India in 2008, was an exception, as he did not enjoy a good rapport with Advani, though Vajpayee promoted him.

In 2012, as the star of both Advani and Vajpayee was on the decline, and Modi was emerging over the horizon, Yediyurappa’s decision to leave the BJP is believed to have played a major role in the party’s Karnataka loss.

Since then, Modi and Amit Shah’s tightening of control on the BJP has seen many regional satraps yielding to the high command – quite like in the Congress, for example. In Karnataka, the party officially ushered in the beginning of the end of the Yediyurappa era when in 2021 he was removed as CM despite his obvious reluctance.

Ironically, it is he again who is shouldering the burden of the BJP campaign in its campaign to win back Karnataka.

To be sure, after leading the party to a massive victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the Modi-Shah leadership did try to groom a new leadership at first, but in going about this, pointedly, by sidelining leaders of dominant local community groups, it was seen as cutting old hands to size, to build up others.

For example, its choice of non-tribal Raghubar Das as CM for Jharkhand, non-Jat Manohar Lal Khattar as CM for Haryana and non-Maratha Devendra Fadnavis as CM for Maharashtra. But this was a gamble, with as many hits as misses. If the above three remain largely state-specific leaders, Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh and lateral entry Himanta Biswa Sarma in Assam are now national names. In Uttarakhand, Pushkar Singh Dhami is seen as a rising star.

The Congress too once had a line of leaders who could hold their own against the high command – Digvijaya Singh in Madhya Pradesh, Ashok Gehlot in Rajasthan, K Karunakaran and Oommen Chandy in Kerala, and Sharad Pawar in Maharashtra. The dwindling of the clout of most of them coincided with the party’s own sliding fortunes.

As party workers themselves admit, the Congress wins now are more about strong state units. Hence, the importance of Gehlot in Rajasthan, and Siddaramaiah now, the Congress’s biggest weapon in Karnataka.

With 73 new faces in its list for Karnataka polls, the BJP is ostensibly aiming for a generation change, readjustment of its caste umbrella, to stretch it beyond its outsized Lingayat share, and countering anti-incumbency. The 2018 list might still have Lingayats in larger numbers than others, but the post-Yediyurappa phase in the BJP has begun.

As part of this, party sources say, the caste distribution in every district was done more carefully this time.

However, the jury is out on whether it will prove enough for the BJP, and make up for the attempt in part to play down Hindutva and focus on development. The results will be for all to see on May 13.