Yediyurappa and Siddaramaiah emerge as key poles in Karnataka politics
- The ideologies and political approach of the two leaders couldn’t be more different
- Despite the differences in their fortunes, both remain seemingly indispensable to their respective parties
Bookanakere Siddalingappa Yediyurappa and Siddaramaiah, two personalities with distinctly different backgrounds, have undoubtedly emerged as the two biggest mass leaders in Karnataka over the last decade or so, transcending the glaring north-south divide in the state.
In 1972, Yediyurappa at the age of 29, was elected as president of the Shikaripura Taluk (Shivamogga district) Jana Sangha and entered public life, while Siddaramaiah was spotted by a senior political leader at the district court in Mysuru in 1978.
The ideologies and political approach of the two leaders couldn’t be more different, but their destinies have intertwined ever since they entered the seventh legislative assembly in 1983 together.
However, their fortunes have been very different since then.
On Monday, the Yediyurappa-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) retained power by trouncing any semblance of competition in the bypolls from the Siddaramaiah-led Congress or the waning H.D. Deve Gowda and H.D. Kumaraswamy-led Janata Dal (Secular) or JD(S).
Yediyurappa won the Karnataka bypolls with little support from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah-led national leadership, putting to rest any shred of dissent against the 76-year-old Lingayat strongman. “He is in a much better position to command now,” said Harish Ramaswamy, political analyst and faculty at Karnatak University, Dharwad.
However, despite the differences in their fortunes, both remain seemingly indispensable to their respective parties.
Siddaramaiah thrives amid dissent that makes him a natural choice to lead the faction-hit Congress. This is largely because there are few others who can match his stature, which he combines with rustic charm, thunderous oratory, and political tact to take on the Modi-Shah duo, Yediyurappa, and Deve Gowda, among others, and also to quell criticism.
The Congress leader, who became only one of three chief ministers to complete a full five years in office has only become more powerful with each election loss. After losing power in 2018, Siddaramaiah was inducted into the Congress Working Committee and later made chairman of the coordination and monitoring committee set up to liaise with its alliance partner, the JD(S).
Soon after the collapse of the Congress-JD(S) coalition and it being routed in the Lok Sabha elections, the party made Siddaramaiah the leader of Opposition despite allegations that he had played a part in destabilizing the Kumaraswamy-led coalition to settle personal scores with his mentor-turned-rival, Deve Gowda.
Siddaramaiah has a reputation of making things personal and caring little about the damage he may cause to the party in his pursuit, according to politicians and analysts.
The conscious decision to snub both Lingayats and Vokkaligas, the two dominant communities in Karnataka, in favour of the Kurubas during his term in office (2013-18) is often cited as one of the main reasons for Siddaramaiah losing power after providing a relatively clean government, embellished by populist schemes, for five years, analysts said.
“It is as if he has a contempt for larger patterns emerging on the ground,” said a Bengaluru-based political analyst, requesting not to be named.
The two leaders have also been accused by detractors of hiding their fondness for each other and their good working relationship under the garb of a rivalry to corner the JD(S). They accuse Siddaramaiah of taking the BJP’s help to engineer the defeat of Deve Gowda, as well as Kumaraswamy’s son, Nikhil , in the Lok Sabha elections this year.
In public, however, the two leaders have attacked the other as fiercely as possible.
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First Published:11 Dec 2019, 08:18 AM IST
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