By V.S. Karnic, IANS,
Bangalore: Karnataka’s over two decades of political instability, except in 1999-2004, seems set to continue as two national parties and at least three regional outfits are expected to make their bids for power in the assembly elections due next May.
Regional parties have not succeeded in ruling Karnataka, unlike in neighbouring Tamil Nadu, where they have been calling the shots for decades now, and to some extent in Andhra Pradesh.
However with the two national parties, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, swamped under heaps of corruption scandals, existing and proposed regional outfits in Karnataka hope to be either kingmakers for a proper price or spoilers if the pie is denied.
Political instability hit Karnataka hard in late 1980s. Between 1989 and now the state has seen 11 chief ministers, with three spells of president’s rule totalling about 10 months.
In this period, only the regime of S.M. Krishna of the Congress, now India’s external affairs minister, nearly completed its five year term in 1999-2004. He opted for early elections in 2004 but the party lost.
H.D. Deve Gowda, then of the Janata Dal, would have, perhaps, completed the five-year term that began in 1993. But better luck smiled on him and he was catapulted to be prime minister in 1996.
The remaining eight chief ministers lasted varying terms, from three years to less than a year.
Jagadish Shettar, the 11th chief minister in these 22 years, is also the BJP’s third chief minister in its four-year rule and will be in office for less than a year. He took over in July and the assembly’s term ends in the last week of May 2013.
Continuing instability stares the state as the ruling BJP is mired in corruption and illegal land deals, apart from dissidence, while state Congress leaders are squabbling, using the caste card either for control of the organisation or to land the chief minister’s post in the event of the party managing to come to power.
All eyes are on the new outfit that BJP dissident leader B.S. Yeddyurappa says he is launching in December.
Though fighting a dozen cases of corruption, the BJP’s first chief minister in southern India is confident that the two national parties, particularly the BJP, have no future in Karnataka, because of the huge graft scandals they are involved in.
The former chief minister claims the support of around 70 of the party’s 120 members in the 225-strong assembly. He is confident that most of them will join him when he launches the new outfit.
There are, however, doubts on the number as many have been backing him in the hope of becoming ministers or landing plum posts as heads of government corporations or boards.
Yeddyurappa has been touring the state and painting state and central BJP leaders as “betrayers” and is taking credit for any good work done by his successors, first D.V. Sadananda Gowda and now Shettar.
The problem for the BJP, as is the case with the Congress, is that it does not have any leader with an all-Karnataka appeal and a clean image to nullify the clout that Yeddyurappa might wield with the voters after he launches his outfit.
While officially maintaining that the BJP is built by millions of workers and not dependent on any individual, the party’s state leaders acknowledge that Yeddyurappa will damage the party prospects, already bleak in view of the various scandals.
Though the Congress too is caught in disunity and lack of leadership, it believes that the damage to the BJP image from the scandals and unending rebellion far outweigh its own shortcomings.
The third major player is the Deve Gowda-led Janata Dal-Secular. It has a strong base in south Karnataka and is betting on the BJP’s problems helping it to make inroads in north Karnataka.
A regional outfit trying its luck for the first time will be the BSR Congress, floated by B. Sriramulu, former BJP minister and close associate of jailed mining magnate G. Janardhana Reddy.
With corruption and other scandals dominating the people’s minds and new parties being floated by disgruntled politicians, the Karnataka electorate is bound to feel that it would have been better off with fewer but cleaner and better choices.