Congress in state, BJP at Centre: To reverse trend, Siddaramaiah, Shivakumar appeal to caste bases

Though the party in power broadly tends to perform better than its rivals in the Lok Sabha elections after coming to power, the Modi years have been among the big exceptions. And breaking that trend is the challenge before the Congress.

siddaramaiah shivakumar congress karnataka

Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah and deputy CM D K Shivakumar campaigning for the Congress in Karnataka, ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. (Photo: Siddaramaiah/ D K Shivakumar/ X)

Written by: Johnson T.A.

5 min readBengaluruApr 22, 2024 03:10 PM IST First published on: Apr 22, 2024 at 03:10 PM IST

In Karnataka, though the party in power broadly tends to perform better than its rivals in the Lok Sabha elections after coming to power. But there have been four big exceptions in 1983-1985, the 1998 elections, and the Modi years and breaking this pattern underlines the challenge before the Congress in the key battleground state that votes on April 26 and May 7 in the second and third phases.

The phenomenon of split voting in the Assembly and Lok Sabha polls has been visible in the Modi era, with voters choosing the BJP in the 2014 and 2019 Parliamentary elections despite the presence of a Congress government in 2014 and a Congress-JD(S) coalition administration in 2019.

In 1983, the Janata Party won the state elections with 95 seats and went on to form a coalition government with the BJP, relegating the Congress to the Opposition benches despite having ruled the state since 1952. However, in the 1984 Lok Sabha polls, held soon after the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the Congress won 24 of the state’s 28 Lok Sabha seats while the ruling Janata Party won only four. Then Chief Minister Ramakrishna Hegde of the Janata Party resigned over his party’s loss and the Assembly elections were held again in 1985, with the Janata Party scoring a resounding win with 139 seats.

Trends after 1985

After the 1983-’85 polls, the Lok Sabha elections between 1989 and 2009 were back in sync with the verdicts in the state polls except in 1998, when the BJP won the majority of the Lok Sabha seats at the end of a full-term Janata Dal government.

Past Assembly and Lok Sabha polls

Congress strategies

Anticipating the BJP’s push on issues such as national security, Hindutva, and Modi’s popularity in the current campaign, Congress leaders in Karnataka such as CM Siddaramaiah and Deputy CM D K Shivakumar are attempting to fortify themselves with fervent appeals to their respective caste bases in the state.

Both Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar have been telling their support bases that their futures are at stake in the Lok Sabha polls. “A lot of people are angry with me because I stand in favour of the poor. They attack me from the time they wake up. You have to hold my hand. The BJP and JD(S) are saying they will win 28 of the 28 seats in Karnataka,” Siddaramaiah said in his home constituency of Varuna earlier this month.

Siddaramaiah’s move to suggest his future as the CM is at stake in the Lok Sabha polls is seen as an effort to consolidate the votes of the Kuruba community and Muslims (accounting for nearly 19% of votes in the state) who are considered ardent supporters of the CM.

Shivakumar, who is the state Congress chief and the main challenger to the CM’s post, has also made similar appeals for support in the Lok Sabha polls from his core support base of Vokkaligas. Shivakumar is attempting to emerge as a leader of the Vokkaligas, who make up 15% of the population in south Karnataka, as the political career of former PM and Janata Dal (Secular) chief H D Deve Gowda, considered the patriarch of the community, comes to an end.

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Shivakumar’s biggest challenge to being recognised as the foremost Vokkaliga leader comes from Gowda’s son H D Kumaraswamy who has joined hands with the BJP in a last-ditch effort to keep the JD(S) alive in Karnataka.

“Kumaraswamy has joined hands with the party that brought down his government. Today, the Congress has given eight tickets for Vokkaligas for the Lok Sabha polls,” Shivakumar told voters in the Vokkaliga heartland of Mandya earlier this month.

While the undercurrent of rivalry between the CM and Deputy CM seems to have been set aside for the elections, there are concerns in the Congress that infighting among leaders will not be able to stand up to the Modi poll juggernaut. “The majority of the Congress candidates picked for the Lok Sabha have strong financial backgrounds. This along with the guarantee schemes should help the party put up a fight in Karnataka. On the ground, however, some rivalries may damage prospects,” said a Congress observer.

To counter the recent tendency of voters not opting for the party in power in the state, the Congress has suggested that having BJP MPs at the Centre does not help Karnataka since they tend to be beholden to the PM and are unlikely to raise issues concerning the state such as tax devolution, water resources, and disaster relief. “The BJP MPs quake when they meet the PM. We need MPs who can raise the concerns of the people of the state,” Siddaramaiah said earlier this month in Mysuru.