It is an Animal Farm of a different kind in Karnataka now. The BJP is out fishing, spreading its net far and wide, looking for anyone who could be lured to opt out of the Congress-JDS combine. With not everyone willing, it is also degenerating into a cat-and-mouse game.
Like it happened with R Shankar, the sole MLA of the Karnataka Pragnyavantha Janatha Party, who won in Ranebennur in Haveri district. He supported the BJP first, then moved to the Congress. A few hours later, he was seen with BJP’s Prakash Javadekar but on Thursday morning, he was part of the Congress protest at Gandhi statue in the Vidhana Soudha complex.
“There is too much pressure on me from both parties,” Shankar admitted, explaining his flip-flop. By the time it is D-day inside Vidhana Soudha, there is no saying which side he will be on.
The Congress and JD(S) hope its MLAs would behave like a flock of sheep, sticking together. But the BJP is looking for possible horses to trade, in order to fortify its stable.
The stink in Bengaluru could not be worse. One thing is for sure. Quite a few elected representatives are set to see achhe din soon. ‘Cash on Delivery’ is the buzzword.
The two black sheep who are reported to have said ‘I do’ to the BJP are Anand Singh and Pratap Gouda Patil. The plan is to get 14 MLAs to abstain during the trust vote so that the half-way mark needed drops to 104, at which stage the Yeddyurappa government will sail through.
Anand Singh and Pratap Patil hail from Ballari and Raichur districts respectively in the Hyderabad-Karnataka region. They were vulnerable because this happens to be the catchment area of the Reddy brothers and B Sriramulu. The Ballari gang has been called upon to arrange the numbers for Yeddyurappa. A glance at their CVs will tell you they have previous work experience, having successfully converted the 2008 Yeddyurappa-minority government into a majority through ‘Operation Kamala’.
They did that by persuading four JD(S) and three Congress legislators to resign from their seats and contest again on the BJP ticket. Five of them won in their second attempt. This time, the time is shorter and the numbers needed are more.
Anand Singh is a turncoat politician. A former Tourism minister, he joined the Congress from the BJP just before the elections and won from Vijayanagara. A tainted mining baron like Gali Janardhana Reddy, he also has interests in the hospitality sector and media. He was arrested twice in the illegal mining case by the CBI in 2013 and 2015. He was the only one of the Congress legislators who did not sign on the letter submitted to the Governor because he had gone incommunicado.
DK Suresh, Congress MP, admitted Singh has flown the coop alleging he is “in the clutches of Narendra Modi”.
The case of Pratap Patil is more curious because the Scheduled Tribe legislator from Maski even signed in support of HD Kumaraswamy. Sources say that he took a flight out of the old Bengaluru airport early on Thursday morning to an undisclosed location. Since it is not the regular commercial operations airport, it could only mean that Patil was whisked away on a private plane and the needle of suspicion is pointing to the Ballari hand.
Interestingly, Patil was with the BJP earlier and had won from Maski on the party ticket in 2008. Subsequently, he moved to the Congress on whose ticket he won both in 2013 and 2018. He had a close shave this time, defeating his BJP rival by just 213 votes. So like Anand Singh, he does not place a premium on party ideology.
The BJP machinery is in overdrive because it suspects a trust vote could be ordered by the Supreme court within the next 24 to 48 hours. BJP leader Basvaraj Bommai admitted it is an uphill task and a challenge. On Friday, the court will look at the letters submitted by Yeddyurappa to the Governor. In those letters, no figure beyond 104 has been mentioned which could put a spanner in the works. On the other hand, the Congress-JD(S) camp has submitted 117 signatures to Raj Bhavan.
Mindgames are also at play. The BJP camp is letting it be known that it is in touch with 8 Congress and two JD(S) legislator-elects. Among them Lingayat legislators playing on their unhappiness over having to work in a coalition headed by Kumaraswamy, a Vokkaliga. The Vokkaliga-Lingayat rivalry in politics has existed in Karnataka for decades.
The Congress and JD(S), keen to ensure an early expiry date of Yeddyurappa’s chief ministership, are now mulling moving their elected representatives out of Karnataka. The Congress lot could move to Kerala, whose Tourism department was quick to send them an invite on Twitter the moment Karnataka voted in a hung assembly. The JD(S) team could move to Hyderabad, where the Telangana government is considered a friendly party.
Newslaundry is a reader-supported, ad-free, independent news outlet based out of New Delhi. Support their journalism, here.
