CWC polls didn't go well for Karnataka leaders twice earlier

No one knows whether there will be an election to the Congress Working Committee at the plenary session here but when polls were held to the party’s highest decision making body twice earlier, it was not a happy occasion for leaders from Karnataka.

None of the leaders from the state could win or get support of enough delegates to usurp a seat at the high table in 1992 Tirupati Plenary and 1997 Kolkata Plenary. The leaders who could not muster enough votes included S Bangarappa, Margaret Alva, M Veerappa Moily, Janardhan Poojary, C K Jaffer Sherief and H Hanumanthappa.

The 79th Plenary in Tirupati had some high drama, thanks to then Karnataka Chief Minister S Bangarappa who announced a boycott of session protesting against the AICC delegates list from the state. He was unhappy with the leadership for not including his supporters in the list.

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After hectic backroom parleys, Bangarappa flew to Tirupati with his supporters on the second day of the session on April 15, 1992. The ministers who were in the flight with Bangarappa were then Revenue Minister Mallikarjun Kharge, Home Minister Dharam Singh, Food Minister TN Narasimha Murthy and Animal Husbandry Minister Basavraj Patil Anwari.

Thirty years later, a plenary is being held to ratify Kharge’s election as party president and Moily, then an Education Minister who defied Bangarappa and flew to Tirupati earlier, is heading a sub-group to draft the party’s political resolution for the session.

One of the fiercest elections to the CWC was held in Tirupati Plenary in 1992 when leaders, including Arjun Singh and Sharad Pawar, predominantly opposed to then Prime Minister and party chief P V Narasimha Rao, got elected.

However, Rao’s smart tactics made all elected members resign as he lamented that there was no proper representation of Dalits, tribals and women.

While Arjun Singh got the highest 430 votes, followed by AK Antony at 426 in that election, the tenth and last to win got 243 votes. Alva, Sharief and Hanumanthappa contested but were nowhere near the winners.

Alva polled 148 out of 804 votes polled, the highest among the Karnataka leaders, followed by Sharief at 131 and Hanumanthappa at 18.

Five years later at the Kolkata Plenary when Sitaram Kesri was the party president, Ahmed Patel got the highest number of 606 votes, followed by Jitendra Prasad at 605. Arjun Singh too was elected but with 354 votes, while the last to enter the CWC was Reddy who won 331 votes.

Again, six Karnataka leaders had bit the dust. Hanumanthappa managed the highest number of votes at 211, followed by Poojary at 169 and Alva at 148. Bangarappa could get only 52 votes.