By V.S. Karnic, IANS,
Bangalore : The BJP is all set to go down in history as a party that reduced Karnataka from a launch pad to rule southern India into a platform to make a mockery of ideals, ideology and discipline, all because the leadership was incapable of decisive action.
While no political party in the country is free from dissident activity, the Bharatiya Janata Party is allowing such developments to reach ridiculous levels in Karnataka.
It has become a mere spectator as cabinet ministers openly support the move of B.S. Yeddyurappa, the party’s first chief minister in the state, to launch his own party in December.
This might well be the first time in the country’s political history that a state is witnessing the spectacle of a group of politicians functioning simultaneously as cabinet ministers and builders of a rival political party.
Yeddyurappa, who was forced to quit as chief minister in July last year over mining bribery charges, has also not resigned from the party yet.
He says he will remain a BJP member till Dec 9 – while going round the state to mobilise support for the new party to be launched Dec 10 at a public meeting in Haveri, about 350 km north of Bangalore.
The BJP might be smug that not acting against Yeddyurappa, like suspending or expelling him from the party, is a political strategy as it would not like to see him portray himself as a “victim”.
But its record in the state in the last four years shows that this is not any strategy but fear of losing the government if discipline is enforced.
In fact, the party rule in the state has been dominated not only by corruption and other scandals but also sort of a free for all in the party.
It began with the mining barons, the Reddy brothers, in the first year of the party rule. They rebelled against Yeddyurappa twice in two years but no action was taken against them.
Even now, one of the brothers, G. Somashekara Reddy, a party legislator from Bellary, and J. Shantha, a BJP Lok Sabha member from Bellary, are openly backing a party founded last year by former BJP minister B. Sriramulu, after leaving the BJP. Shantha is Sriramulu’s sister.
The BJP has not even suspended them from the party.
Nearly half the ministers in the Shettar cabinet of 34 members are believed to be Yeddyurappa loyalists.
The ministers openly or tacitly supporting Yeddyurappa’s move to form a new party include C.M. Udasi (public works), Shobha Karandlaje (energy), M.P. Renukacharya (excise), Murugesh Nirani (industries), Basavaraj Bommai (water resources) and V. Somanna (housing).
Others, like Animal Husbandry Minister Revu Naik Belamagi, say they will decide on joining the new party once they get a formal invite.
Yeddyurappa’s son B.Y. Raghavendra, a BJP Lok Sabha member from Karnataka, is also actively working for the formation of his father’s party. Earlier this week, he performed the ‘ground-breaking’ ceremony for the new party’s office at Shikaripura, Yeddyurappa’s assembly constituency, in Shimoga, about 280 km north of Bangalore.
Ministers and MPs like Raghavendra have clearly realised that their party’s central leadership will not dare act against them as that could lead to the collapse of the Shettar ministry, though it has only just seven months more in office. The assembly polls are due in May next.
The only senior BJP leader to face action for “anti-party” activities so far is former central minister V. Dhananjaya Kumar.
He was expelled from the party early this month for six years, more for attacking Shettar than for backing Yeddyurappa.
With BJP president Nitin Gadkari himself fighting for survival following the Maharashtra irrigation scam and dubious investments in his firms, it is party time for the party’s legislators and ministers in Karnataka – having the cake and eating it too, as long as possible.
(V.S. Karnic can be contacted at [email protected])