With the election dates looming large on the horizon, political parties are gearing up for the upcoming state elections at Karnataka. While the going is increasingly getting tough for the ruling BJP in the state, the Congress on the other hand seemed to be in a beneficial position. But is the battle between the two as black and white as it appears or is there increasing shades of grey?
In the past five years that the Bharatiya Janata Party have been ruling the state of Karnataka, there hardly have been any breakthroughs in the state in terms of development and governance. Instead there have been huge turmoil and intra-party conflicts between the ruling elites in the state. High levels of corruption, non-existence of any significant policy measures and significant ignorance towards the minority community are some of the key answers that the party will face during the elections. Unlike the development card in Gujarat and the Anti-Congress policy in Goa which helped the BJP taste victory in the last few state elections, in Karnataka, there are hardly any triumph cards available to them.
Ever since the media exposure of huge irregularities in the government and the alleged involvement of the then Chief Minister BS Yeduruppa in the various land allocation scams, questions of credibility were being raised repeatedly. Due to huge internal and external factors, he had to resign from the top political post. But the turmoil didn’t stop there. This followed by threats to boycott the party by BS Yeduruppa and his loyal MLAs to the dissatisfaction of the appointment of Sadanand Gowda as the Chief Minister and his subsequent resignation, BJP appeared to be fishing in the troubled waters a lot.
In order to do away with the uproar and contain mass dissatisfaction, the party high command decided to appoint Jagdish Shettar as the Chief Minister. This move of the BJP went through a lot of speculations as the rumours had it in the air that Jagdish Shettar was one among the closest aids of BS Yeduruppa. When everything seemed to have settled down, BS Yeduruppa played the biggest gamble of his life which stunned many. He decided to part ways with the BJP and founded his own party named the Karnataka Janata Party which would be now contesting the polls against the BJP.
As the election dates are knocking hard on the BJP’s door, they appear to be more helpless than ever before. With the failure of Modi’s campaign in some of the districts of Karnataka, botched equations of inter-caste politics and the new turmoil of leadership with as many as five leaders eyeing the topmost position, the Bharatiya Janata Party is nowhere near stability as far as the current scenario is concerned. The attempt to woo the Lingayats also didn’t seem to win many shares of votes for them. The last resort is the traditional Hindutva politics that the BJP is desperate to play so that some balance could be achieved. But this too, in my opinion doesn’t seem to help them much.
Sensing the opportunity, Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi recently took a dig in to the election campaigns of the state. Kick starting his campaign last Tuesday, he claimed that the BJP had ‘looted’ the state for the past five years and they were ‘past masters’ in the game. Launching his campaign on May 5 in the district of Raichur, 394 km north of Bangalore, Gandhi said the ruling BJP had promised many things in its poll manifesto but none of the mentioned had been fulfilled ranging from power supply to water to employment.
In an attempt to connect to the ‘aam aadmi’, Gandhi reiterated his party’s commitment to welfare measures and said that the party is not for the rich but has always been pro-poor. He also promised irrigation works worth Rs. 10,000 crores for the Krishna basin. Gandhi mentioned the special status given to North Karnataka and said that he has fulfilled his promise given before. He also addressed crowds in Bagalkot and Bijapur and the northern districts of the state as a part of his Karnataka tour. Meanwhile even Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh supposed to come to Karnataka as part of their election campaign.
So will the Karnataka elections be the deciding factor of the 2014 General elections? Will the BJP able to regain its ground or will the state face some post-poll alliance, may be with the KJP? Is the Congress strong enough to throw the ruling BJP out of power? And the milliondolar question, will it ultimately be NaMo vs RaGa? Only time seem to have the answers.
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