A Hindutva hawk who revels in rebellion against Yediyurappa clan

Bengaluru: Basanagouda Ramanagouda Patil Yatnal is no “adjustment” politician in the words of his closest supporters.

To sample the 60-year-old BJP leader’s style of functioning, go no further back than a few days and weeks when he openly berated his party’s state president B Y Vijayendra and by extension his father, four-time chief minister B S Yediyurappa.

This earned him a show-cause notice. After explaining himself to the party, Yatnal said, “My target isn’t Vijayendra. My target is that the BJP should form the next government, that there should be an honest CM who isn’t corrupt and that we should move away from dynasty politics.” Corruption and dynasty are why Yatnal went after the father-son duo.

It was not the first time that Yatnal targeted Vijayendra openly, provoking many in political circles to wonder whether he was the BJP central leadership’s chosen one to undermine the clout of Yediyurappa internally.

Yatnal, an RSS-man, Hindutva firebrand, Lingayat and former union minister, ticks quite a few boxes, which is possibly what’s kept him from getting expelled this time.

It’s no secret that Yatnal is something of a self-styled ‘firebrand,’ who attacked even Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the Centre’s delay in providing flood aid to Karnataka in 2019. The party had slapped him with a show-cause notice for the act of indiscipline back then. But it seems to have had little impact on him.

“I’m not afraid of anything. In my 30-year political career, I have always spoken for people, for development,” is how Yatnal has defended his controversial statements.

Like Uttar Pradesh’s Yogi Adityanath, Yatnal came to public attention by being quite the rabble-rouser.

From 1994, when he won the Bijapur City seat, to becoming an MP from the area in 1999, and then catching Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s eye, Yatnal’s ascent has been quick.

In 2001, Yatnal took on Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu, who wanted the Centre to stop the Upper Krishna project. Naidu even threatened to pull out of the NDA. In response, Yatnal threatened to quit as MP, forcing the late H N Ananth Kumar to step in. Yatnal got noticed and was inducted as a minister in the Vajpayee government in 2002.

“Ananth Kumar had ensured that Yatnal became a minister in the Vajpayee Cabinet at a young age so as to hone him as an alternative Lingayat leader against Yediyurappa,” a senior BJP leader said.

BJP was forced to expel Yatnal twice — in 2010 and 2015 — for ‘anti-party’ activities.

His first expulsion, for his sharp criticism of the party’s affairs, took him to the JD(S).

Yatnal returned to the BJP in 2013, but he was booted out two years later for contesting as a rebel candidate in the Legislative Council election, which he won.

Earlier, Yatnal was seen as a lone wolf as other BJP leaders were believed to be “too afraid” to speak out.

But now, Ramesh Jarkiholi, Aravind Limbavali, Kumar Bangarappa, Pratap Simha, G M Siddeshwara among others are openly siding with Yatnal.

Sources said this camp isn’t happy that only Yatnal came in the crosshairs of the party’s leadership. So, it looks like they have a pact to take turns. After Yatnal, Ramesh Jarkiholi is publicly attacking Vijayendra’s leadership. “I’ve become silent, Ramesh has become violent,” Yatnal quipped.

In a chequered political career, which started in 1990 as the BJP’s Vijayapura City vice-president, Yatnal has worn his outspokenness and Hindutva credentials on his sleeve.

To his opponents, it is nothing more than brazenness and open prejudice, but that has not deterred him. His Hindutva fidelity has earned him the moniker of ‘Hindu tiger’.

Yatnal, a BCom graduate, credited his Hindutva politics for being elected as the sole BJP MLA in the Vijayapura district in the 2023 Assembly polls.

Yatnal once instructed councillors to work for Hindus and not Muslims and said that intellectuals should be shot.

He brazenly attacked centenarian freedom fighter H S Doreswamy by calling him “a fake freedom fighter” and “an agent of Pakistan”, leading to a huge political row.

Outside politics, Yatnal heads Sri Siddeshwar Samsthe, a 122-year-old nonprofit, and a sugar factory. He runs a gaushala that houses 1,000 cows without any government aid.