The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is being pushed into a corner in Karnataka following threats by a section of its party rebels. These rebels say they will contest as Independents, or as Congress candidates.

This mainly follows the party’s decision to sideline stalwarts like Sadanand Gowda (71) former Chief Minister who represents Bengaluru North, and K. S. Eshwarappa (75) former Deputy CM. Eshwarappa wanted his son, K. Kantesh, to be nominated as a Lok Sabha candidate from Haveri, something that the BJP central leadership has not accepted.

A furious Eshwarappa, who has quite a clout among the Kuruba community ,has now threatened to contest as an Independent from Shimoga. This is the constituency where the BJP has fielded B. Raghavendra, son of former CM and party stalwart, B. S. Yediyurappa. The disgruntled Eshwarappa did not attend Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent rally at Shimoga.

In fact, the aggrieved politician alleged that Yediyurappa had assured a ticket for Kantesh besides promising to campaign for him. “But he cheated Kantesh,” Eashwarappa claimed.

Meanwhile, the BJP’s new ally, the Janata Dal-Secular has also publicly voiced its displeasure at “the treatment being meted out” to them especially in terms of seat sharing. The party chief H. D. Kumaraswamy could not hide his disappointment while attending a core committee meeting. He claimed the BJP’s attempt was “to provide only two Lok Sabha seats, instead of the three to four that we want.”

The JD-S wants to contest from Kolar, Hassan and Mandya constituencies, while the BJP appears to be limiting it to Hassan and Mandya only. Kumaraswamy, however, did not highlight the fact that the BJP has already nominated his brother-in-law, Dr C. N. Manjunath as its own candidate from Bengaluru Rural.

While hoping that the BJP would take an early call on the constituencies to be marked for his party, the JDS leader reiterated that its ally would benefit greatly from the clout that “ we have in almost 18 Lok Sabha segments ,in terms of votes.” He added for good measure that the JDS did not tie-up with the BJP only to fight on two seats.

What, however, could come as a major threat to the BJP is its ally’s threat that if required “the JDS would not hesitate to contest from the Kolar seat, on its own.” According to BJP insiders the party wants to put up its own candidate from Kolar.

The suspense about the seat allocations has been a major concern for the JD-S, as the BJP has not come out with the full list of 28 Lok Sabha candidates yet. It is another matter that Kumaraswamy had announced at Hassan recently that his nephew, Prajwal Revanna, will contest from that constituency.

These developments aside, the BJP is concerned with the growing anti-Yediyurappa sentiments in the party with the rebels, in particular, questioning the clout that the former CM and his son, state unit chief B. Vijayendra have.

Not surprisingly, Eashwarappa is leading the dissent. It may be recalled that during the Assembly elections of 2023, Jagdish Shettar, too was furious at not getting a ticket. Shettar had held Yediyurappa responsible for this. He quit the party and joined the Congress but could not win his own seat in that election. Now, of course, he has returned to his parent party.

In Sadanand Gowda’s case, the situation is different. The party had dropped his name after he announced that he was retiring from politics. Now that Shobha Karandalje’s name has been announced as a candidate from his old constituency, Gowda feels cheated. He has threatened to join the Congress, adding that he has already been approached by that party.

The BJP’s headache does not end here. Some of the other leaders whose names did not figure in the first list, even though they had won their seats in 2019, are also angry with the party for sidelining them.

In its first list for Karnataka, the BJP had dropped nine of its sitting MPs and changed Karandalje’s seat from Udupi-Chikmagalur to Bengaluru North. According to the former CMs critics, Karandlaje was able to get another seat allotted as she is a close associate of Yediyurappa. They added that this was despite the fact that the voters in her old constituency had expressed disappointment at her performance.

Pratap Simha, the MP from Kodagu-Mysuru, also found that his name was missing from the list as did the party’s former state unit president, Nalin Kateel. Simha vented his ire against Yaduveer Wadiyar, who had been named as a candidate from this constituency, before agreeing to campaign for him.

Meanwhile, Karandlaje, a union minister of state for agriculture, asserted that she was not an outsider to Bengaluru North, where she is contesting from this time. The minister claimed that she had voted from the Hebbal assembly segment in four elections.

She was also quick to point out that her political career had started from Bengaluru’s Yashwantpur Assembly segment in 2008. She was seeking to deflect criticism of being an outsider from Udupi-Chikmagalur, and that her voters in Bengaluru North would not be able to identify with her.

Latest News