Over the past few months, as the prominence of former Karnataka chief minister B S Yediyurappa has declined in the BJP in the state, Basavaraj Bommai — picked by Yediyurappa himself as replacement CM — has tried to emerge as a new pan-Karnataka BJP leader through a slew of measures, including the promise of job and education quotas for a range of communities.
While there is no clarity yet on how Bommai will circumvent the 50 per cent ceiling for reservations to fulfill the quota promises, the promise – including to a key sub-sect of the dominant Lingayat community, the dominant Vokkaligas, and to Dalit, tribal communities — holds the potential of making or breaking the BJP and Bommai in the 2023 state polls.
There are murmurs in the BJP in Karnataka that Yediyurappa is not happy with his successor’s attempts to eclipse him as the foremost Lingayat leader through the caste machinations at a time when Yediyurappa himself is politically sidelined by the BJP and awaiting a clearance from the party to project his younger son B Y Vijayendra as his true successor. “The ties between the two leaders have soured in recent times,” BJP sources said.
The reservation trapeze act that has been performed by the Bommai government so far has involved a hike in the quota for Dalits from 15 to 17 per cent, the hike in quota of Scheduled Tribes from 3 to 7 per cent, and the re-categorization of Lingayats and Vokkaligas into new OBC categories (not out of the 15 per cent available to OBCs but the 6 per cent for EWS).
“There was no agitation for reservation by the Vokkaligas, but as soon as Bommai’s Vokkaliga Cabinet colleagues presented a memorandum, the CM agreed to the reservation demand. This is an attempt by Bommai to project himself as a pan Karnataka leader,” the BJP leader said. The BJP is seen as having a weak standing in south Karnataka, where the dominant Vokkaligas are allied with the JD(S).
Officials point out that this reservation circus has created more confusion among all communities rather than provide any clarity, and it is unclear what political dividends it will yield. “It seems to be a policy of ‘confuse and convince’,” an official said.
The influential Panchamasali sub-sect of the Lingayats is already protesting against this. The community had carried out a two-year long agitation for inclusion in the 2A category of OBCs to avail the 15 per cent reservation for them. On December 29, the Bommai Cabinet did not accede to this demand, but moved the Lingayats altogether from the 3B category to a new 2D category. Their reservation remains at 5 per cent till an increase via the EWS quota. On Thursday, the Panchamasalis warned of consequences for the BJP in the 2023 state polls.
Among the Lingayats, who constitute nearly 17 per cent of the population, the Panchamasalis can be decisive in many northern seats. The Lingayats have largely backed the BJP in recent polls and consider Yediyurappa their principal leader.
“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time,” Basavaraj Patil Yatnal, a BJP MLA and trenchant critic of both Bommai and Yediyurappa, quipped on Thursday.
Yatnal, who is considered a maverick and even a possible BJP CM candidate, has accused Bommai of not acquiescing to the Panchamasali quota demand in order to please Yediyurappa, who fears losing importance as a Lingayat leader if the quota agitation succeeds. “If you take a decision to please the son of a leader, and the leader, then there will be a price to pay,” Yatnal said, in a thinly veiled dig at Yediyurappa and son.
Yediyurappa himself has stayed away from BJP events in recent weeks, indicating his unhappiness at the state of affairs. “There is no truth in the rumours that the BJP is attempting to finish off Yediyurappa. Nobody can finish anybody in politics. I have my own strength. I have built the party and will continue to do so,” he said last month when rumours emerged that he was reluctant to attend a BJP event featuring national president J P Nadda.
Bommai said at the time: “He is our supreme leader. All political planning will be done only after consultations with him. We have his blessings. We have a father-son relationship and there cannot be a question of differences between us.”
Opposition parties too are trying to fish in the troubled waters. “Yediyurappa built the BJP in Karnataka. What is the status of Yediyurappa now? How is he being treated by the BJP leadership?” former Karnataka CM and JD(S) leader H D Kumaraswamy said this week, during an interaction with the Lingayat community in Mysore.