The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is giving itself the last-mile push to maximise returns from Central Karnataka that is critical to its victory for various reasons. The five districts of Shivamoga, Davangere, Chitradurga, Tumakuru and Bellary account for 41 of the 224 assembly seats, have a large population of the Lingayats, an intermediate caste that has voted the BJP since the late 1980s after Veerendra Patil, the last major Lingayat leader the Congress had, was publicly rebuffed by Rajiv Gandhi and an equally huge presence of the Dalits, comprising 101 sub-castes, and the scheduled tribes for whose votes the Congress and the BJP have put themselves out. The Dalits are principally categorised into the Chalavadis or “touchables” (identified by the right hand) and the larger sub-caste of Madigas or “untouchables” (marked out by the left hand).
If the BJP has the Lingayats and the Brahmins (miniscule in numbers) for its base vote, the Congress is fastened to the support of the backward caste Kurubas or shepherds, the caste to which the chief minister Siddharamaiah belongs, and the minorities. These basic affiliations leave a vast swathe of other groupings for the parties to prey upon and win over.
The existence of the Janata Dal (Secular), Karnataka’s third player, ceases with Tumakuru where the presence of its traditional Vokkaliga voters makes it a contender against the Congress, BJP or both in virtually every one of the 11 seats.
Siddaramaiah’s ploy to classify the Lingayats as a minority community and to initially split the Lingayats from the Veerashaiva sect (that was foiled by his Congress colleagues) has not impacted the community’s sentiments. “It has rebounded on him,” said Shivayogi Swami, a former BJP legislative council member of Davangere, adding, “We Lingayats never considered ourselves as distinct or different from the Hindus. The move to segregate us from Hinduism and to further split us has angered the community. Had this not happened, the Lingayats might not have been so enthusiastic about voting. Now they are determined to vote in the BJP like a clenched fist.”
Asked if BS Yeddyurappa’s return to the BJP (he had broken away before the 2013 elections and floated his party that damaged the BJP in all the Lingayat-majority seats) also re-affirmed the community’s comeback, BG Revan Siddappa, the BJP’s Davangere district secretary, said, “It’s not a question of Yeddyurappa’s projection as the CM that works for the Lingayats.
It’s about (Narendra) Modi’s good work.”
With the BJP out of power in Karnataka for five years, its Lingayat votaries invoked the Centre’s “achievements” to validate their backing for it. For Prashant CR, a young businessman who shuttles between his village, Chilangee in Chitradurga district and Bengaluru, the winner was the Goods and Service Tax. “GST has changed everything for me. There’s genuine competition among business persons, tax evasion has reduced and the uniform tax rate has ensured that my transactions with Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu go off smoothly,” he said.
Still, all’s not as neat as the BJP would like it to be. In Davangere’s eight assembly seats, local Congress Lingayat veteran, Shamanur Shivashankarappa and his son, SS Mallikarjuna, both in the fray, have managed to wean away “at least” 30 percent of the community’s votes from the BJP, by the party’s own admission. Shivashankarappa had thwarted Siddharamaiah’s gambit to break the Lingayats into two sects and being an entrepreneur and a philanthropist, is widely regarded by the community.
To answer Shivashankarappa’s challenge, the BJP has unleashed bands of young Lingayats, many of who are first-time voters, not just in Davangere but the other districts to urge the community not to vote the Congress. The BJP has armed the youths with the names of those Lingayats it suspects are pro-Congress.
The other factors the BJP has counted on to bolster its tally are the political rehabilitation of the Bellary Reddy brothers and the projection of tribal leader B Sreeramulu, a Reddy clan protégé, as a pan ST leader.
The Reddys and Sreeramulu might have detracted from the BJP’s anti-corruption rhetoric being used in full blast against the Siddaramaiah government. But its leaders believe that the micro-level graft cases involving the chief minister and his colleagues might contain, if not “undo”, the negative Bellary effect. The “sand mafia”, that allegedly pushed up the price of a truckload of sand from Rs 10,000 to Rs 25,000 over the last four years and the charge that a Rs 25,000 bribe was extracted from each targeted beneficiary of the chief minister’s free borewell scheme for the Dalits and tribals have been intensely propagated by the BJP.