Opinion State of no choice

The Congress in Karnataka is already hearing the distant but approaching sound of the victory drums. To win,it is banking entirely on the anti-incumbency vote. It wants to go to the voters and count aloud the misdemeanours of the BJP government. The co-chairman of its election committee,D.K. Shivakumar,said the campaign would rest on the BJP’s misrule. “We will tell the voters how the BJP set Karnataka’s image back by 20 years.”

To lead this campaign,the party needs leaders. There,the Karnataka Congress has many leaders and,consequently,none. The leader of its legislature party and the leader of the opposition is Siddaramaiah,a relatively recent entrant into the party. In the caste jigsaw,Siddaramaiah is a Kuruba,a backward class in the state. The president of the Karnataka Congress and the chairman of its election campaign committee is G. Parameshwara,an SC leader appointed in 2010. Neither sees eye to eye with each other,partly because both are legitimate chief ministerial aspirants.

It should be a straight leadership fight between the two by virtue of their positions,but were it only that simple. Also in the reckoning are several others,including two Union ministers. Corporate Affairs Minister Veerappa Moily is a former chief minister who is said to hold favour with the Gandhi family in Delhi,and is rumoured to be looking for a comeback. Moily belongs to the backward classes faction. Labour Minister Mallikarjun Kharge,on the other hand,is an SC leader who has had at least one near-miss for the chief ministerial post already.

There is no shortage of leaders of other hues,too,who may not be in the chief ministerial race. The backroom boys of the Congress in New Delhi are Janardhan Poojary and Oscar Fernandes. There is also S.M. Krishna,until recently India’s external affairs minister whose chief ministerial reign,some Congressmen claim,represented Karnataka’s most-recent glory days. Krishna’s supporters may still hope for his return,but he is clearly too over-the-hill to be the chief minister of a state whose capital has a population with the median age of 25. Each of these leaders is strong in pockets and popular among groups of legislators and to-be legislators.

But the sum of these parts does not equal a whole Congress. No one among this line-up is on shoulder-slapping terms with each other,so it can be stated with reasonable certainty that their followers and their followers’ followers are also busy waging ground-level wars. In a memorable quote,Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had analysed the party’s Uttar Pradesh 2012 poll debacle as “too many leaders”. In Karnataka,there is a semblance of the same phenomenon.

While all this simmers under the surface,disunity is churning. First,the Congress has to choose candidates for 225 assembly constituencies. It started the process by dispatching observers to study and hold meetings with partymen in each constituency and come up with a list of potential candidates. After that was done,the party mystifyingly embarked on another process: an open call for applications that served to net a neat Rs 2 crore in fee and a flood of applicants. This has only made the final choice of candidates even more wrenching. Former chief minister Dharam Singh told this columnist from New Delhi that hundreds of these aspirants have landed in Delhi. Rather than good news,he said,this is a “headache for the high command”.

The party is dreading the announcement of the list of candidates as only one hundred candidates have been finalised. As for the other 125 seats,the strong hopefuls have been narrowed down to two,three or four. All hell may break loose upon the announcement of candidates unless the party has a strategy to deal with dissension from those who do not make the cut. For instance,in Bangalore city alone,the internal competition for the seats of Hebbal,K.R. Puram,Mahadevapura and Rajajinagar is intense. One Congress leader said the party could lose these seats because the final candidates could end up fighting thwarted party rivals rather than their official poll opponents. These constituency-level dramas could be the Congress’s undoing in Karnataka. Some see the vision of partymen blowing up its chances,seat by seat.

If that is the scenario within,it is the picture outside that gives the Congress some hope. The equally disunited BJP has run through three chief ministers during its blemished assembly term whose high points were infighting,incompetence and scandals. The party has splintered,and two newer parties are now led by former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa (KJP),and the mining scam-tainted Reddy brothers’ crony,former minister B. Sriramulu (BSR Congress). In all this,there is another not-to-forget election variable for parties: former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda,his son,former chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy,and their Janata Dal (S).

Trends in the recent urban body elections in Karnataka indicate that exasperated voters feel the Congress deserves a chance. But whether the Congress itself feels deserving of that chance is another matter.

saritha.rai@expressindia.com