Union home minister Amit Shah vetoes BJP proposal to prop up Lingayat as CM face

BENGALURU: Union home minister Amit Shah has vetoed Karnataka BJP’s proposal to pick a Lingayat aspirant as its CM face for the May 10 election to counter Congress’s bid to brand the saffron party as being against the community.
Shah repeated publicly in Bengaluru Saturday what he apparently told the state BJP thinktank the previous day — that some prominent Lingayat faces like former CM Jagadish Shettar and Laxman Savadi exiting the party wouldn’t stop the party from getting “15-20 seats more” than the halfway mark (113) in the 224-member assembly.
“To undo any possible damage (from the exit of a few Lingayat leaders), we suggested that the leadership declare a Lingayat as CM if the party remains in government. But Shah rejected it, saying it will lead to consolidation of non-Lingayat votes,” said a senior BJP functionary who was at Friday’s meeting convened by Shah.
Shah asked the state leadership to focus on development, the “double-engine” growth plank and reservations in the final leg of campaigning for the polls. He also urged them to ensure the party extracts the maximum out of proposed rallies by PM Narendra Modi in about 20 locations after April 30.
The minister said he would also go on a campaigning blitzkrieg starting April 29 in Varuna.
Shah, who was in Bengaluru for a roadshow at Devanahalli, held a meeting late in the night with the state BJP top brass to review poll preparations after the rally got cancelled due to heavy rain. CM Basavaraj Bommai, his predecessor BS Yediyurappa, Karnataka BJP in charge Arun Singh, BJP national general secretary (organisation) BL Santhosh and other senior functionaries, including Annamalai and Shobha Karandlaje, attended the meeting.
The home minister reportedly instructed the state leadership to launch a campaign against Shettar, Savadi and Ayanur Manjunath, projecting their exit from BJP as “betrayal” after being given key positions in the party.
At another recent meeting of the state BJP leadership, attended by Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan, the party had discussed how to mitigate the impact of Lingayat faces leaving the party and joining Congress, alleging humiliation and insult. It was during that discussion that they proposed to launch a counter-campaign by announcing that the next BJP chief minister would be a Lingayat.
Shettar claimed the community wouldn’t trust BJP even if it propped up a Lingayat CM face after seeing how it treated former CM Yediyurappa and others.
Congress member and ex-CM Siddaramaiah stoked a controversy by alleging that Lingayat CMs from BJP were involved in maximum corruption. A video of his remark has gone viral.