Bengaluru: Laxman Savadi’s defection from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to the Congress is likely to have ripple effects in his hometown of Belagavi – a politically significant district.
The move appears to have jolted the saffron outfit, which has lost an influential leader of the Lingayat community, which can determine the electoral outcome in the state.
Meanwhile, Savadi’s entry will address the Congress party’s lack of a Lingayat leader of influence in Belagavi.
Belagavi lies at the heart of the Karnataka-Maharashtra region, which consists of seven districts and is called Kittur Karnataka.
Assembly polls in the southern state will be held on May 10, while the votes will be counted on May 13.
The reasons behind Savadi’s defection
Savadi’s defection was prompted by the BJP’s decision not to give him the ticket to contest the Athani seat in the district. Savadi had represented the constituency thrice. The ticket was given to Mahesh Kumathalli, the sitting MLA from Athani.
Savadi said he was promised a ticket by senior leaders like B.S. Yediyurappa. But when the promise was not fulfilled, he quit the party and resigned as an MLC to join the Congress on April 14.
Belagavi is a huge district which has 10 taluks and 18 MLA seats. The entry of the 62-year-old leader will add to the Congress’s strength in the district, party insiders believe.
In 2018, the BJP won 10 of the 18 seats in Belagavi, while the Congress got the remaining eight. In 2019, when 17 MLAs from the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular) defected and brought down the H.D. Kumaraswamy-led coalition government, three legislators who shifted sides were from Belagavi. They were: Kumathalli (Athani seat), Ramesh Jarkiholi (Gokak), and Srimanth Patil (Kagwad).
In 2018, Kumthahalli (then in the Congress) defeated Savadi in Athani. However, in a surprise move, BJP made Savadi the deputy chief minister after Yediyurappa assumed power in 2019. He was elected as an MLC then.
However, the decision to appoint him as a deputy chief minister had come under criticism as Savadi, along with two other ministers, were caught on TV cameras in 2012 watching a pornographic video in the state assembly.
The defection of the 17 Congress-JD(S) MLAs to the BJP was engineered by then Congress leader Ramesh Jarkiholi, one of three brothers from the powerful Jarkiholi family. Therefore, he needed to protect the interests of the two other Congress MLAs from Belagavi who defected to the BJP – Kumthahalli and Patil – along with him.
He said that if Kumthahalli was not given a ticket, he too would not contest. Perhaps succumbing to the pressure, the BJP gave tickets to all Jarkiholi, Kumthahalli and Patil.
Will it change the equation for Congress?
Congress hopes that Savadi’s entry would change the equation in favour of the party in Athani and neighbouring constituencies. It wants to perform better than it did in 2018, when it won eight seats.
As for the BJP, it must not only do well in the Old Mysore region – where it has traditionally failed to make an impact – but substantially improve its performance in Belagavi and the Maharashtra-Karnataka region.
Amid all the political chaos, Congress’s D.K. Shivakumar has a personal goal to achieve. His rivalry with Ramesh Jarkiholi is well-known: according to Shivakumar, Jarkiholi was the main player behind the collapse of the Congress-JD(S) government.
D.K. Shivakumar. Photo: PTI
Secondly, Jarkiholi blames Shivakumar as the ‘unseen hand’ behind the release of the sleaze CDs which led to his resignation as a minister.
The Congress state chief perhaps sees the defection of Savadi as a god-send moment to defeat the BJP in Jarkiholi’s battleground.
The Jarkiholis belong to the Valkimi (Nayaka) community (Scheduled Tribe). They represent the powerful sugar co-operatives in the Belagavi district as well as in neighbouring Maharashtra.
Balachandra Jarkiholi – who is also in the BJP – is the chairman of the co-operative behemoth Karnataka Milk Federation, one of the most successful milk cooperatives in the country.
B.S. Arun is a senior journalist based in Bengaluru.