The BJP’s central leadership has gone for a ‘surgical strike’ in Karnataka by replacing nine sitting Lok Sabha MPs and fielding eight new faces in the upcoming parliamentary elections.
The BJP has decided to field Mysore royal family member Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar, distinguished cardiologist and son-in-law of Deve Gowda Dr CN Manjunath, and former BJP chief minister Basavaraj Bommai among other new faces.
Calculated Risk?
In the second list of Lok Sabha candidates for the southern state, the BJP has tried to bring in fresh faces who can give a tough fight to the Congress as well as maintain the caste balance in those seats.
The BJP has retained some of its warhorses and has taken a ‘calculated risk’ with some others.
“They have given tickets to those, who, if denied, could have sabotaged the BJP’s prospects. There was also no alternate choice in some of those seats,” said a senior BJP leader on condition of anonymity.
Those nominated again to contest the Lok Sabha elections are Anna Saheb Shankar Jolle (Chikkodi), PC Gaddigoudar (Bagalkote), Ramesh Jigajinagi (Bijapur-SC), Umesh Jadhav (Gulbarga-SC), Bhagwant Khuba (Bidar), Prahlad Joshi (Dharwad), BY Raghavendra (Shivamogga), PC Mohan (Bangalore Central), and Tejasvi Surya (Bangalore South).
B Sriramulu, a close confidante of mining baron and MLA Janardhan Reddy, will contest from the Bellary seat. Sriramulu had lost the Karnataka Assembly elections and has earlier represented Bellary in the Lok Sabha.
Basavaraj Bommai, under whose leadership the BJP contested the 2023 Assembly polls and won 66 out of 224 seats, has been accommodated in the Haveri seat, while V Somanna, who took on current Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in the Varuna Assembly seat, has been given the Tumkur seat to fight the general elections.
Basavaraj Kyavatoor (Koppal) and S Balaraj (Chamrajanagar) are making their Lok Sabha election debut. Gayatri Siddeshwar will replace her husband, former MoS GM Siddeshwar, in the Davangere seat.
BJP spokesperson S Prakash called the list of names announced for Karnataka a “balanced one”. “Winnability is the criteria. The BJP will sweep the election and will win more than 20 seats,” he told News18.
Who Lost Out?
The party has dumped controversial MP from Mysuru Prathap Simha. It was Simha’s signature on the visitor’s pass that gave access to a group of protestors to enter Parliament in December last year, causing a major security breach. He has been replaced by the scion of the Mysuru royal family, Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar.
An upset Simha said in a veiled dig that he was “proud the Mysore royal family wishes to live like ordinary people rather than stay indoors with air conditioning as kings”.
The second major shakeup has been the Dakshin Kannada seat where sitting MP Nalin Kumar Kateel has been replaced by Kota Srinivas Poojary, the current Leader of Opposition in Karnataka’s Legislative Council. Kateel has represented the seat thrice, while Poojary has served several terms as a state minister during BJP regimes in Karnataka. Kateel has been facing anti-incumbency in his seat after the brutal murder of BJP Yuva Morcha leader Praveen Nettaru in Mangaluru. Local BJP workers have been extremely upset with the way he handled the case.
“The Billava community, who form a large part of the constituents in the region are angry with Kateel and that was also communicated to the central leadership,” said a senior BJP functionary from Dakshin Kananda.
Four-time MP and former Union minister Sadananda Gowda has also been dropped from the Bengaluru North Lok Sabha seat and has been replaced by Shobha Karandlaje who had earlier been elected as an MP from the coastal Udupi-Chikkamgalur seat. Gowda, who has Karnataka’s chief minister in November, announced his retirement from electoral politics. He was reportedly upset with the BJP at not being consulted while drawing up the candidates list.
A party insider also said an alleged viral video sealed the leader’s fate in 2021. In the video, Gowda is purportedly heard talking to an unidentified woman. The leader later filed a complaint with the cybercrime police, alleging it was a “fake, lewd video” spread to tarnish his image.
Other sitting MPs who have been dropped are GS Basavaraju (Tumkur), Karadi Sanganna Amarappa (Koppal), Y Devendrappa (Bellary), Shivakumar Udasi (Haveri), and V Srinivas Prasad (Chamarajanagara).
New on the Block
Dr CN Manjunath, a noted cardiologist who recently joined the BJP, will be contesting from the Bengaluru Rural constituency against three-time MP DK Suresh who is also the brother of Karnataka’s Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar.
This constituency is considered a Vokkaliga stronghold and the pocket borough of the Shivakumar brothers. By fielding Dr Manjunath here, the BJP hopes to give them a tough fight in the heartland of the Vokkaligas, the community the Deve Gowda family is known to be the face of.
Shobha Karandlaje, Union Minister of State for Agriculture, Farmers’ Welfare and Food Processing Industries, has been shifted to the Bengaluru North Lok Sabha seat instead of Udupi Chikkamgaluru. Local BJP workers in Chikkamagalur had started a ‘Go Back Shobha’ campaign against her and had raised objections to her being given a ticket from the seat. Local leaders who were part of the protests claimed that though she represented the seat for two terms, she had no acquaintances among even the block committee leaders of the party.
Another surprise entrant is Captain Brijesh Chowta who has been given the ticket instead of sitting Dakshin Kannada MP Nalin Kumar Kateel.
Chowta, who is presently the state secretary of the Karnataka BJP, comes from a military background and calls himself a ‘cultural political activist’ and entrepreneur. He served in the 7th battalion of the Gorkha regiment and also served during the counter-insurgency in Manipur and Assam. Chowta had been a strong contender for the seat.
‘Willing to Strike, Afraid to Wound’
Political analyst SA Hemanth says the BJP central leadership has gone with the time-tested dictum that discretion is a better part of valour with this selection of candidates in the second list.
“It wanted to effect a drastic change. However, the BJP has retained many MPs to ensure there would be no internal squabbles that could hurt the party’s chances of winning. This move also means that the central leadership was willing to strike but afraid to wound,” he said.