It is a reflection of the gutter level politics that our politicians play that the newly-anointed chief minister of Karnataka, H D Kumaraswamy, has said that he is at the “mercy” of Congress which gave him the coveted position and not indebted to the six crore Kannadigas whose exercise of franchise led him to the post.
Kumaraswamy should be ashamed that for the sake of the chief ministerial chair, he subverted the mandate of the people and brought in a rejected party, the Congress, back to power after a vote that was clearly anti-establishment. His talks with the BJP, with which he was flirting during campaigning, failed solely because the saffron party was not prepared to offer the post of chief minister to him on a platter which the Congress was ready to.
Kumaraswamy’s father and mentor H D Deve Gowda, who counselled him to keep a distance from the BJP and to go with the Congress, did so for reasons of opportunism and expediency. He calculated that while the BJP would zealously guard its turf, the Congress was more vulnerable and the Janata Dal(S) would consequently be able to build up the party better if it allied with Congress.
Now, however, Deve Gowda, sensing the mood of the people, claims that Kumaraswamy had never set conditions before the Congress like chief ministership for himself but it was the grand old party whose leaders had ‘insisted’ that Kumaraswamy be chief minister of a Congress-JD(S) coalition. The government having been formed willy nilly, Congressmen now want to extract their pound of flesh. Congress billionaire and ex-minister Shivakumar said recently that there was no stipulation that Kumaraswamy would be chief minister for the entire term. Evidently, the Congress in Karnataka has plans to displace Kumaraswamy in due course with one of their own if he does not do their bidding or even otherwise.
Having succumbed to pressure to accommodate 22 Congress ministers as against 12 of the JD(S), Kumaraswamy is being browbeaten for plum portfolios by the Congress. Once again, Kumaraswamy’s insistence is of a personal nature — he is not too concerned about other portfolios but he wants Finance for himself that Congress seems unwilling to concede as of now.
The Deve Gowda-Kumaraswamy game plan to corner key portfolios and to run their fiefdom to re-establish their hold over the state was based on the assumption that like the last time that there was a Congress-JD(S) coalition in the State in 2005, the then chief minister Dharam Singh of the Congress was more pliable. Kumaraswamy calculated that with Siddaramaiah out of the way, the Congress would have a weak leader like Dharam Singh.
The father-son duo is dreaming of 1994 when the undivided Janata Dal won as many as 115 seats in the Assembly or of at least bettering the 2004 record of 58 seats as Janata Dal(S). The Congress has had many precedents when, from a near-complete sway, it has been reduced to an also-ran. In Uttar Pradesh, there was a time when it had a steamroller majority. It did not take too long for the regional parties — the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party — to whittle the Congress’ strength down drastically. Meanwhile, the BJP came forth and jolted even the regional parties out of their complacency. But, the Karnataka Congress has shown a new desire to expand and is looking at increasing its footprint. It looks upon the JD(S) as a necessary evil as of now so that it can bounce back after the reverse under Siddaramaiah.
Hoping to cross swords with Kumaraswamy is billionaire D K Shivakumar who belongs to the same caste as Kumaraswamy — the Vokkaligas — and is likely to increasingly challenge the new chief minister. Then there are the Lingayats who the Congress regime of Siddaramaiah sought to woo by taking steps to declare them a separate religious group. The Lingayats, who constitute 17 per cent of Karnataka’s population have traditionally been the BJP’s vote bank and there would be a tug of war between the BJP and the Congress for control over them.
While the BJP won a larger part of the Lingayat-dominated seats in the recent Assembly elections, the Congress too won 20+ and it is this group that the BJP hopes would bolster its numbers as and when it tries to form an alternate government. The Dalits are another target group for all parties and the appointment of Parameswaran as deputy chief minister by the JD(S)-Congress combine is a step to further cultivate this caste group.
The BJP would be looking to exploit any differences between the Congress and the JD(S) that may develop over a period of time. All it needs is seven legislators (the number has come down by one with the demise of a Congress legislator) to topple the Kumaraswamy government, but after the fiasco resulting in a series of purported leaks of lures to Congress and JD(S) legislators by BJP leaders in the period before the trial of strength in the Assembly, the BJP would tread warily.
The Congress is particularly keen not to allow the coalition boat to rock before the Lok Sabha elections but whether the JD(S) would have the same commitment remains to be seen. Kumaraswamy is a slippery customer and the Congress can ill afford to rub him on the wrong side too much. The other option is for a group of legislators to face disqualification by crossing over to the BJP in which case they could come through the route of a fresh by-election.
Kamlendra Kanwar is a political commentator and columnist. He has authored four books.
