People are virtually unanimous on who is responsible for the turnaround in their town’s fortunes: H D Kumaraswamy, whom they affectionately called Kumaranna. No wonder, Kumaranna’s riding piggyback on the enormous goodwill of the electorate.

But history weighs heavily on HDK’s re-election: Ramanagara, from where two chief ministerial and one prime ministerial candidates have elected in the past, has never sent anybody to the Assembly twice, consecutively: C M Lingappa (1999), H D Deve Gowda (1994), C M Lingappa (1989) and Puttaswamy Gowda (1985).

HDK also has to contend with the clever political strategy of the Congress which has pitted Mamtha Nichani, the daughter of the late bete noire of H D Deve Gowda, Ramakrishna Hegde, against HDK. Mamtha’s candidature was actually the Congress’ 11th hour decision, apparently taken by Sonia Gandhi herself.

Seeds of doubts

But if the Congress thinks that by merely choosing a woman it could sow seeds of doubts in the minds of Deve Gowda and his son, then it is mistaken. Even an assumption that Mamtha can do a Tejaswini Ramesh who mauled the senior Gowda in the 2004 Parliamentary elections, could be a reflection on the party’s poor homework. Mamtha, in fact, has even failed to pin down Kumaraswamy, to the constituency, for the confident former CM after a mere two-day whirlwind barnstorm has left the campaign to the care of his lieutenants.

Delimitation has posed some worry to HDK. Two of the four hoblis of Kanakapura — Harohalli and Maralwadi — have now been added to Ramanagara. Though these hoblis were Dal strongholds, the Congress has managed to penetrate them, thanks to the Gowda-P G R Sindhia rift.

But Mamtha’s disadvantages outnumber her rival’s. She is new to the rough-and-tumble of electoral politics, while her opponent is a seasoned politician.

She is new to the constituency, while Kumaraswamy is a popular face. She began campaign late, whereas the former CM had been nurturing the constituency for quite long.

Even community wise, Mamtha is at a disadvantage. A Brahmin, her community is only about 5,000-strong. Kumaraswamy’s Vokkaligas, however, are the dominant community with 60,000 voters belonging to it. All former MLAs from Ramanagara have been Vokkaligas. Besides, Congress leaders are not showing the same enthusiasm as they did while persuading her to contest. Only two days have been left for campaign to wind up, none of the bigwigs have campaigned for her.

If the voters choose development as the yardstick to assess the candidate, then HDK is well placed. But if they want to experiment, he is in for trouble.

Mamtha has a different take on development which, she alleges, is concentrated only to Ramangara town, while the hinterland begs for attention. She also says she is here to ‘cleanse’ politics. If you ask HDK as to who is his opponent, he says it is BJP’s Rudresh, who is identified as the BMIC promoter, Ashok Kheny’s man. Rudresh is a Lingayat and the constituency has 10,000-15,000 Lingayat population.