JOIN USEnd of an era for Karnataka BJP
Karnataka politics and the BJP in the state enter a new chapter with the resignation of B S Yediyurappa as Chief Minister. Yediyurappa, 78, has had a long innings in state politics. An RSS member from his college days, he came up the hard way, from being appointed the Sangh’s Shikaripura unit secretary in 1970 to being elected an MLA for the first time in 1983 to ultimately becoming Chief Minister. Along the way, and with other BJP old-timers like B B Shivappa, A K Subbaiah and V S Acharya, he virtually built the party in the state from scratch and helped make it the BJP’s gateway to the South. Yet, though he became CM on four occasions since 2007, he had to resign midway each time and under controversial circumstances. While he was appreciated for his never-say-die attitude and hard work, the devious means of coming to power by engineering defections from rival parties – Operation Kamala was practically ‘invented’ in Karnataka -- will remain a blackmark on his political career.
On the face of it, Yediyurappa had everything going for him, and so the question arises whether he squandered it all. The government was running smoothly, he had numbers on his side, the party high command seemed unsure of precipitating any action against him, the opposition parties were rather soft on him. While he had an uneasy relationship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the start, the circumstances of his exit are reminiscent of 2011, when he was charged with corruption and nepotism and even went to jail and had to be forced to resign. This time, too, his own party members accused him of having allowed his son to become a frontman for him and a ‘Super CM,’ a situation that they found humiliating and untenable.
While he was reviled on the corruption issue though, Yediyurappa, even while being the undisputed political leader of the Lingayat community, was known for being secular in his outlook and did not suffer from some of the worst tendencies of the religious right-wing in India. He did not use hatred and polarisation to gain power and no section of society saw him as an enemy. Neither did he indulge in political witch-hunts, even against those who he felt had betrayed him at times. Whether these things could be said of his successor as Chief Minister remains to be seen. Indeed, that the BJP does not have a ready replacement for him despite the fact that the efforts to unseat him, sometimes with a wink and nod from the central leadership, have been on for several months, speaks to his importance for the party. He will be missed in Karnataka’s political landscape.