Hubballi Dharwad Central, the constituency which gave the State two Chief Ministers (S.R. Bommai and Jagadish Shettar) has drawn the attention of the nation this election as Mr. Shettar, who was considered a “soft spoken, loyal worker” of the saffron party, sprang a surprise by going against the party’s diktat.
Mr. Shettar, whose family was long associated with Jan Sangh and who was Chief Minister albeit for a short period as leader of BJP, has now removed the saffron shawl and replaced it with the tricolour shawl of Congress party.
Six-time victory
Being the senior most BJP and Lingayat leader from North Karnataka, Mr. Shettar did deliver a shocker to the BJP camp with his exit and he is using the “hurt card”. After the initial shock, the BJP camp is now busy making all out efforts to retain the seat, which it won successively for six times from 1994 with Mr. Shettar as its candidate.
The Congress, on the other hand, is happy as the entry of another Lingayat leader has not only boosted the morale of party workers in the region, but also kindled the hope of winning the seat after a gap of three decades.
In the first four Assembly elections, the seat, then known as Hubballi Rural Assembly Constituency, was won by the Congress and it was in 1978 that S.R. Bommai of Janata Party (father of present Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai) snatched it away from the Congress. S.R. Bommai retained the seat for two more terms and he went on to become Chief Minister of the State. However, he failed to win it as the Janata Dal candidate in 1989 and he was defeated by Congress party’s G.R. Sandra.
Saffron surge
It was during the 90’s that the saffron party’s growth in region started with the Idgah movement on the lines of Murli Manohar Joshi’s ‘Ekta Yatra’ to hoist the national flag at Lal Chowk in Srinagar, which took a violent turn in 1994 taking away the lives of six persons. The saffron surge helped BJP’s Mr. Shettar to win Hubballi Dharwad Central in Assembly elections held later in the same year. Ever since, he has remained undefeated. The segment was renamed Hubballi Dharwad Central after delimitation in 2008.
In his first election, Mr. Shettar faced Basavaraj Bommai (present Chief Minister) who contested as Janata Dal candidate then. Mr. Bommai then took the Legislative Council route to become a legislator before joining the BJP in 2008. According to Mr. Shettar, the reason for denial of ticket to him is that Mr. Bommai and few others in BJP see him as a contender for chief ministerial position.
Opposite camp
Like in 1994, Mr. Shettar and Mr. Bommai are in opposite camps now. While Mr. Shettar fought against a Chief Minister’s son (Basavaraj Bommai) in 1994, now he is pitted against BJP functionary Mahesh Tenginakai. Mr. Shettar terms it a “fight for self respect” but the BJP camp is targeting him for “betrayal.”
The BJP has cleverly replaced Mr. Shettar, a Banajiga Lingayat, with Mr. Tenginakai from the same community. However Mr. Shettar’s tirade against party’s national organising secretary B.L. Santosh, a Brahmin, seems to have turned it into a “Brahmin vs. Lingayat” fight and Mr. Shettar has taken it further by targeting Union Minister Pralhad Joshi. To troubleshoot, the BJP had to rope in its Lingayat face and ex-Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa.
For a change, Congress leaders have stood behind the party candidate burying their differences. Winning the seat has turned into a matter of prestige for the BJP high command, Mr. Bommai, and Mr. Joshi too. While around 30 functionaries and workers who followed Mr. Shettar have been expelled, the party is wary of the potential damage by Mr. Shettar’s sympathisers in the party.
