Siddaramaiah’s Fate Hangs in His Biggest Battle Yet

This election season, it’s all or nothing for Karnataka’s incumbent CM Siddaramaiah.

With just a day to go before Karnataka votes, the political heat in the southern state is rising. While there are three major parties in the fray, namely, the Congress, the BJP and the JD(S), much of the attention, airtime and print space has been captured by only the two national parties.

With Narendra Modi’s last minute blitzkrieg, the contest has turned into a ‘Siddaramaiah versus Modi’ battle. While Yeddyurappa has virtually been sidelined and forced to outsource the campaign to Modi, Rahul Gandhi has been content playing second fiddle to Siddaramaiah.

Congress Finally Allows Regional Leadership

It’s indeed interesting that Siddaramaiah has been given the carte blanch by the Congress high command to lead the party in the elections. The Karnataka Congress has had a long history of being remote-controlled by the Delhi high command. Former Chief Minister Veerendra Patil, a tall Lingayat leader, was sacked unceremoniously by Rajiv Gandhi in 1990 for defying the party diktat. The timing of the move was even worse — Patil was recovering from a heart stroke and the state was witnessing a series of unprecedented communal clashes.

The move cost the Congress heavily — the Congress lost power in the next assembly polls as its tally dropped from an all-time high of 179 seats to an all-time low of 36 seats in the 224 member Karnataka assembly. The party also lost its Lingayat voter-base to the BJP, which helped the saffron party rise in Karnataka.

Twenty-eight years later, in 2018, the Karnataka Congress seems to be very much in charge of its own fate, led by a strong regional satrap in Siddaramaiah, with minimal or almost no interference from a much subdued Congress high command, which is surely going through its toughest period. After its 2014 debacle, the Congress went on to lose power to the BJP in Maharashtra, Haryana, Assam, Kerala, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.

In all these states, the Congress did not have a strong regional leader with a devoted social base and almost in all of these states, the Congress high command remote controlled the state unit, resulting into successive defeats for the party. In Gujarat too, the Congress did not have a strong local face and had to outsource its campaign to the young trio of Hardik, Alpesh and Jignesh.

It seems as though the Congress has finally learnt its lesson. The party high command, who has a dubious record of killing any strong, independent, regional leadership from rising has finally allowed a strong regional leader in Siddaramaiah to call the shots in one of its most important electoral battles in recent times.

The Cong ‘Outsider’ Finally Calls the Shots

An ‘outsider’ in the Congress (he joined the Congress in 2006 after he was expelled from the JD(S) by HD Deve Gowda), Siddaramaiah who is often described as on ‘old Janata hand’ by analysts, has risen through the rank and file of the party rapidly and remarkably.

When Siddaramaiah took over the reins of the party after becoming the CM in 2013, the party was plagued by factionalism. His elevation to the top post was full of drama and suspense.

It’s a well-known fact that he faced some fierce opposition from the likes of G Parameshwara, the KPCC president and a Dalit leader, the powerful Vokalliga strongman DK Shivkumar and even Congress stalwart Mallikarjun Kharge, who were all in the running for the top job. Over the last five years, he has consolidated his position as the leader of the party in state, quelling factionalism and winning the confidence of the Congress President Rahul Gandhi.

The BJP, which is desperate to win another state and make inroads in the south, realises that for the first time in a long period, it is up against a formidable local mascot. The last time the election winning colossus, the BJP, was up against a strong regional satrap, Nitish Kumar, it lost miserably.

‘Nidderamaiah’, ‘Siddaravan’, ‘Mr 10 percent’, ‘Jihadi CM’, ‘Siddarupiya’ and ‘Modern Day Tipu Sultan’ are some of the monikers coined by the BJP to attack Siddaramaiah. Elections in India have of late become a clash of personalities and the Karnataka election is no different. What began as an ‘Amit Shah versus Siddaramaiah’ contest has now turned into a ‘Modi versus Siddaramaiah’ contest.

‘Bhagya’ Social Schemes is Cong’s X-Factor

In a smart shift of strategy, Narendra Modi has been scathingly attacking Rahul Gandhi trying to make it a ‘Modi versus Rahul’ battle. The shrewd politician, the rabble-rousing orator and the master strategist in Modi realises that a ‘Modi versus Rahul’ narrative will help the party win hands down.

On the contrary, Siddaramaiah has been aggressively trying to make it a ‘Sidda versus Yeddy’ face-off. But as of now, the election has largely become a ‘Modi versus Siddaramaiah’ fight. While the BJP seems confident, that Modi will deliver for them again, it is also wary about Siddaramaiah projecting himself as a symbol of ‘Karnatakada Hemme’ (Karnataka’s pride).

The incumbent CM, on the other hand, is not so comfortable about being in a direct face-off with the PM but is secretly enjoying the challenge which has boosted his stature as a leader. Whether it’s Twitter or an election rally, Siddaramaiah is relentlessly taking on the PM, punching above his political weight.

In all the political posters and hoardings of the Congress in Karnataka, it’s Siddaramaiah and not Rahul Gandhi who is more visible. A lot has been said and written about the Lingayat move, the Kannadiga sub nationalism card, the pitch for a separate flag and the anti-Hindi rhetoric of the CM.

But perhaps, in a wave less election with no significant pan-Karnataka issue, the biggest X-factor maybe the ‘Bhagya’ brand of social schemes and the slew of populist schemes like the ‘Indira canteens’ launched by the CM to target the urban and the rural poor.

Siddaramaiah’s Biggest Battle

Siddaramaiah’s rationale behind launching the slew of social welfare schemes is simple — in an election (in India), it’s the poor who vote the most. Whether Siddaramaiah’s social engineering, his AHINDA strategy, his Kannadiga nationalism poll plank and his all-out attempt to woo the poor with the populist schemes, will help him win a second term will only be known on 15 May.

However, the one thing that is clear is that this election is Siddaramaiah’s biggest battle ever. He is the man with the maximum to win or lose in this election, much more than Rahul or Modi.

A simple majority will help him create history by becoming only the second CM after Devraj Urs to be re-elected after serving a full five year term. If the Congress wins, the Delhi Durbari coterie of the party would try their best to project it as a victory of the crown prince, Rahul Gandhi, but in reality it would be Siddaramaiah, who would be the ‘man of the match’. But anything short of majority would ensure that he will become the favourite ‘belting boy’ for his detractors, within and outside the party. It is, clearly a case of all or nothing for the incumbent CM.

(Omkar Poojari loves following, and writing on Indian politics, elections and current affairs. He recently travelled through different parts of Karnataka to follow the election campaign closely. He tweets at @Omkarismunlimit and can be reached at [e-mail]. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)

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