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Goa CM Pramod Sawant is going all out for BJP, ally JD(S) in Karnataka. What he brings to table

April 16, 2024
Saqafy Times

Sawant was present at Kumaraswamy’s nomination filing in Mandya on 4 April.

Political observers say the Goa CM was the key link that helped in formalising the alliance between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the H.D.Deve Gowda-led Janata Dal (Secular), or JD(S).

It was Sawant who ‘convinced’ Deve Gowda’s younger son and former Karnataka CM H.D.Kumaraswamy to meet with the BJP brass for hammering an alliance to take on the Congress in Karnataka, they say.

“Pramod Sawant is the key person…for a long time the BJP wanted the JD(S) to join them. Savant is the key person who made that alliance,” senior JD(S) leader Kupendra Reddy told ThePrint.

Kumaraswamy and Savant have held talks several times and the two met on a few occasions in Goa, allowing alliance talks to take shape, the former Rajya Sabha MP added.

Facing threats to its very existence after the May 2023 assembly election, the JD(S) decided to initiate talks with the BJP. In September last year, the JD(S) and the BJP formalised their alliance to take on the Siddaramaiah and D.K.Shivakumar-led Congress party in Karnataka.

The Goa CM has ever since spent considerable time campaigning in Karnataka, taking part at roadshows in constituencies across Karnataka. While the BJP is contesting 25 seats, the JD(S) will field candidates in 3 seats of Mandya, Kolar and Hassan.

Also Read: Ticket denials trigger ‘proxy war’ in Karnataka BJP. Eshwarappa leads charge against Yediyurappa 

Not just neighbouring states

Karnataka has a significant Maratha population and even has a development board dedicated to the community. The Marathas are believed to account for about 4 percent of the southern state’s population.

Districts bordering Maharashtra and Goa have Maratha candidates winning in local and state elections, though not entirely based on language but as a community.

The two national parties — the Congress and the BJP — are also looking to cut into the community’s votes that are likely to swing towards the Maharashtra Ekikaran Samithi (MES), a separatist outfit that still commands influence over large chunks of the community in these parts of the state.

The MES, which is seeking the merger of Karnataka’s Belagavi district with Maharashtra, has fielded (as independents) Mahadev Patil from Belagavi and Niranjan Sardesai in Uttara Kannada.

In 2019, Ananthkumar Hegde bagged over 68 percent of the votes in Uttara Kannada. But with Hegde now sidelined and not seen campaigning for his replacement Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri, the Congress believes it has a chance.

In the 2021 Belagavi Lok Sabha bypolls, BJP’s Mangala Angadi won by just 5,240 votes against Satish Jarkiholi of the Congress. The two candidates fought a fierce battle but over 1.36 lakh votes were spread between the Independents, including Shubham Vikrant Shekle who secured over 1.17 lakh votes.

In comparison, Mangala Angadi’s husband Suresh Angadi, who died in 2020, had won with huge margins.

Several political leaders from the north-western districts of Karnataka have close bonds and even families on the other side of Maharashtra.

Senior Congress leader R.V.Deshpande’s son is married to the daughter of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Praful Patel. Most political leaders from these parts also speak Marathi apart from Kannada and Hindi.

“The idea to showcase Sawant is to attract the Maratha votes by demonstrating how a member of the community is the CM in neighbouring Goa,” the analyst cited above said.

‘Congress trying to finish us off’

The BJP and the JD(S) formed an alliance in 2006 when Kumaraswamy went against the wishes of Deve Gowda to join hands with B.S.Yediyurappa. The two took turns to become CM, with Kumaraswamy taking the chair between February 2006 and October 2007.

Yediyurappa took over as CM after a month of President’s rule after Kumaraswamy stepped down. However, just a week after Yediyurappa was sworn in as CM for the first time, Kumaraswamy pulled out, starting a bitter rivalry between the two parties.

Post the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Yediyurappa initiated another round of ‘Operation Kamala’ in which 17 legislators from the JD(S)-Congress alliance jumped to the BJP.

Political analyst A.Narayana says that both alliance partners are placing individual interests that will help them in the future.

“In the Old Mysuru region, the JD(S) sees the Congress as direct competition and by joining hands with the BJP, they hope to take on the Congress,” Narayana, faculty at the Azim Premji University, told ThePrint.

He added that the JD(S) has prolonged what it saw as its imminent end after being reduced to 19 assembly seats in 2023 — its worst performance since its birth in 1999.

The BJP is trying hard to defeat D.K.Suresh in Bengaluru Rural and has fielded C.N.Manjunath, the former director of Jayadeva Institute and son-in-law of Deve Gowda, as its candidate.

The BJP and the JD(S) are hoping that since Suresh is a member of the Gowda family, there will be a direct transfer of votes.

In Karnataka, the JD(S) has allied with the BJP and the Congress, taking advantage of the volatile voter behaviour. From 2004 to 2023, there have been three fractured verdicts and the Congress is the only party to have secured two majorities in 2013 and 2023.

Reddy said that if it had not partnered with the BJP, the “Congress would have finished us off” within the next 5-10 years.

Now, the two parties are back together to defeat the ‘common enemy’, the Congress.

Kumaraswamy has in the past stated that Modi had approached him for an alliance. “The BJP was also ready to make me CM. Narendra Modi personally offered this to me. He said nobody will be able to touch you for 5 years, you take a decision,” the JD(S) leader had said in September 2020.

The JD(S) turned down the offer and was not going to engage in ‘opportunistic politics’ for power, he had said.

Long-term goal

The JD(S) believes that the alliance can stop further erosion of its support base and regain territory and vote share it lost to the Congress. The BJP is hoping to make inroads into Old Mysuru districts or the Vokkaliga heartland with the help of the JD(S).

The BJP has formed the government thrice on its own in Karnataka and once with an alliance, but has never managed to win a majority on its own.

Seats in the Old Mysuru region have largely remained elusive for the BJP. Since the BJP has no big presence there, the JD(S) does not perceive the national party as a threat to its former bastions. Instead, it is wary of the Congress.

The JD(S) was reduced to just 13 percent vote share from over 18.3 percent in 2018, while the Congress went up from 38.1 percent to 43.2 percent between the two state elections.

Kumaraswamy is confident that he will win in Mandya and that he will find a place in Modi’s cabinet. He told PTI Tuesday that he is eyeing the agriculture portfolio. As the JD(S) is heavily reliant on support from the farming community and Vokkaligas — an agriculture-dependent community — for votes, this strategy can help it regain some lost ground if Kumaraswamy has his way.

This will also help Kumaraswamy help his son, Nikhil, take over his assembly seat of Channapatna, should the NDA retain power in Delhi. This will help Kumaraswamy lend to his claims of being the heir apparent in the battle of dominance within the Gowda family, analysts say.

Reddy, however, says that Nikhil’s candidature in Channapatna is yet to be discussed.

But Narayana sees a larger problem for the JD(S) in the long run, including the very reason it joined hands with the BJP — to contain the exodus of leaders.

He says that JD(S) leaders may want to directly contest from the BJP in the future. Even the Vokkaliga youngsters have shown signs of backing the BJP and Hindutva politics, the political analyst adds.

Deve Gowda is 90 and Kumaraswamy is 64 but the latter’s health has been a concern.

Narayana says if both leaders are not active at the time and with no second rung leadership in place, this is likely to lead to an outright merger. ”If the alliance stays intact till the 2028 Karnataka assembly election and the BJP-JD(S) forms the government…the real story starts there. Then the BJP will not need the JD(S) and the JD(S) will have nowhere to go,” he suggests.

Note: An earlier version of the report stated that Pramod Sawant did not feature in the BJP’s list of star campaigners for Karnataka. The error has been rectified.

(Edited by Tony Rai)

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