BJP to Cong: Shettar looks to retain bastion from new camp

A small crowd gathers inside a simple looking house along a narrow by-lane in suburban Hubballi, just off the Hubballi-Karwar road. Inside the low-roofed house, his head barely grazing past the wooden rafters holding up the roof, former Karnataka chief minister Jagadish Shettar makes an impassioned plea.

“Back when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) did not have political workers to contest for local body, taluka panchayat or zilla panchayat elections, it was I who gathered and motivated people to work for the party,” Shettar says.

“Despite all this, I was told over the phone that I had no ticket (for the assembly elections). I felt bad (that it had come to this) after working for the party. Then they told me to make someone from my family to contest. I didn’t agree. I told them if you are giving (me) a seat only, I would continue or else no. I was offered other positions as well,” he adds, with his voice choking.

Shettar is quick to add that his electoral fight is for “self-respect” and not for any position from Hubballi-Dharward Central assembly constituency, where he is now a Congress candidate pitted against Mahesh Tenginkai of the BJP, the party on whose ticket the former got elected for six terms since 1994 and was associated with for the past 40 years.

Hailing from a political family, Shettar’s father was Hubballi-Dharwad’s first mayor from the then Jan Sangh party in the 1990s. “Shettar was a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker from his student days. His father and his uncle were RSS activists and his father went on to be the first Jan Sangh mayor of Hubballi-Dharwad,” recalls Dr Pandurang Patil, a former BJP mayor of Hubballi municipal corporation, who claims to have quit active politics.

Keen contest

On April 18, Shettar left the BJP and joined the Congress, saying the former was not willing to give him “even a party ticket”, which he claimed, was all “he was asking for”. He accused BJP national general secretary B L Santhosh of sidelining senior party leaders like him and BS Yediyurappa, who had built the party in Karnataka, to make a way for himself.

The BJP did not take his joining the Congress lightly.

On Friday, Union home minister Amit Shah in Hubballi said Shettar will lose the elections. “There’ll be no loss (in BJP), Jagdish Shettar will himself lose the election, Hubballi has always voted for BJP & all workers of BJP are united,” Shah said at a press conference, with Union parliamentary affairs minister and local MP, Pralhad Joshi, seated next to him. He also held a meeting with senior party leaders in the district to ensure they work for the party candidate.

Shah is the second big leader after BJP national president JP Nadda to visit Hubballi since Shettar’s exit. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to address a rally in Hubballi in the first week of May, according to local BJP leaders. “The strategy is to minimise the impact of his (Shettar) exit in the region,” says a senior district BJP leader, who was present at Nadda’s meeting last week.

Although Shettar’s rise in Hubballi mirrors that of the BJP, which locals say, is because of championing the Idgah maidan controversy. In 1992, on the lines of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, the party championed the cause of opening the Idgah maidan – an open space located right in the centre of the town – to allow functions of all communities and not just the Muslims.

On August 15, 1994, when then BJP leader Uma Bharati tried to forcibly hoist the national flag on the grounds defying prohibitive orders, in the commotion that ensued, police opened fire, killing six people. Shettar won his first assembly election that year from Hubballi, which has been a BJP bastion since then, (party) winning both assembly and Lok Sabha seats. Incidentally, Shettar defeated Basvaraj Bommai, who was then contesting on a Janata Dal ticket, from Hubballi rural constituency. Bommai is now in BJP and chief minister of the state.

“Before the Idgah (controversy), the BJP couldn’t even get a councilor elected to the municipality. There was no (Pralhad) Joshi, no Shettar. After the controversy, Shettar became an MLA and the BJP won the Lok Sabha constituency (then represented by businessman and logistics baron Vijay Sankeshwar, who quit the party in 2004 paving the way for Pralhad Joshi’s rise),” says the senior district BJP leader mentioned above.

Idgah maidan in focus again

In August last year, the Hubballi-Dharwad Municipal Corporation permitted the installation of a Ganesh idol on the maidan, despite pleas from Muslim groups that the events not be allowed. The Karnataka high court upheld the municipal corporation’s decision, allowing Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations at the maidan for the first time in history and ensuring the pot is kept boiling in the run up to the polls.

“The BJP is going door to door talking about the Idgah maidan, revitalising former Congress chief minister Siddaramaiah’s promise to give Lingayats recognition as a separate religion and to claim that the Congress is trying to divide the Hindus. They are also raking up the reservation issue, hoping to delay the Supreme Court hearing, challenging the decision to remove the 4% reservation for Muslims and use it for the polls,” says a local journalist, who did not wish to be named.

“The Muslims and others make up 22% of the constituency. The BJP’s effort is to try and unite 78% against 22%. It’s a strategy that has worked for them well in the past. Shettar’s entry into the Congress changes the equation,” says Shakir Sanadi, a general secretary of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee.

Lingayat factor

Back at his upper middle-class home in central Hubballi, Shettar meets delegations of people waiting for him late into the evening as his home is turned into a makeshift campaign office. Adorning the walls are framed images of Shettar meeting Shah, while clocks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s face alongside that of Shettar and the BJP continue to occupy the prime space, signifying a transition that isn’t really complete.

Much of his chances depend on the influential Lingayat community, that makes up nearly 34% of the population and has been a core base of the BJP ever since former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi allegedly ‘insulted’ former chief minister and popular Lingayat leader Veerendra Patil who was unceremoniously dismissed from the top post in 1990.

Like Patil, Shettar too belongs to the Banjiga (traders) subset of the Lingayat community. He and Laxman Savadi (who represents Athani in Belagavi), are two most prominent Lingayat leaders from north Karnataka who recently deserted the BJP. But with the community’s foremost leader Yediyurappa continuing to stick with the BJP, experts doubt whether the Lingayats will switch over.

“Much of the community’s voting patterns depend on the edicts issued by the seers of the Lingayat mutts. These mutts have benefited financially during the tenure of B S Yediyurappa and many have been issuing edicts to continue to back the BJP,” says a journalist for a local newspaper, who does not wish to be named.

A Narayana, a political science professor at Azim Premji University, says data shows that Lingayats voters are not as homogeneous as they appear. “They switch every five years for Congress and BJP,” he says.

Reality check

On ground, Shettar has to do a lot of explaining for leaving the BJP and joining the ideologically opposite Congress. “A lot of people in the whole of Karnataka and especially in north Karnataka are calling me and saying that (the BJP has insulted) not only Jagdish Shettar but our (Lingayat community’s) self-respect. That whatever decision you have taken is 100% correct and we are going to support you,” he says.

BJP’s Mahesh Tenginkai is a Lingayat and first-time contestant to take on Shettar. Tenginkai, who was an aspirant back in 2018 as well, was preferred, allegedly at the recommendation of Santhosh. “We have worked together for 30-40 years. The strength of our party is in the grassroots-based cadre. Shettar quitting will have no effect on the party, our voters are loyal to the party and not the person,” says Dr Lingraj Patil, the Dharwad Vibhag Prabhari (district incharge) of the BJP.

Patil believes that the BJP has been able to successfully convince voters that Shettar has enjoyed positions – chief minister, leader of opposition, speaker of the assembly and minister – and failed to repay the party’s faith in him at the slightest refusal.

“He has profited from the party and now has not respected the party, and instead challenged the high command. On the contrary, his presence has curtailed the rise of younger leaders in the party. The people are upset that he, who belongs to the family of Jan Sangh leaders, has made a switch,” Patil says.

Analysts say the election boils down to two factors – whether Shettar can convince his community that the BJP is indeed attempting to backstab the influential Lingayat community and whether his voters are true to the party or true to him as a leader.

Dr Pandurang Patil believes that the BJP will retain the seat. “Not even 10% of the party workers and corporators, who at one point were threatening to resign en masse, left with Shettar to join the Congress. The voters will not shift,” he says.

The Congress, too, admits that Shettar has his task cut out.

“Shettar is seen in the Congress as one of the non-harmful leaders of the BJP. But, unlike the BJP, which has a rigid structure and party discipline, Shettar will take time getting used to the Congress and will have to spend time bringing the various factions together before he can begin his campaign in earnest,” Sanadi says, expressing confidence in Shettar’s victory.

Back in 2018, Shettar had won the Hubbali-Dharwad central seat with a margin of 21,306 votes, winning 51% of the votes, while the Congress’s Mahesh Nalvad earned 37% of the votes.