The star campaigners list for the November 13 bypolls to Shiggaon, Sandur and Channapatna have exposed the faultlines within the political parties.
The byelections to the three assembly seats vacated following the incumbents’ (Basavaraj Bommai, E. Tukaram and H.D. Kumaraswamy) election to the Lok Sabha last May, has turned into a prestige battle to the ruling Congress and the BJP-JD(S) alliance. The high decibel campaigns have turned into a show of strength of the heavy weights, and also as a spectacle of the internal bickering in each party.
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The saffron party released a list of 40 star campaigners but carefully excluded Hindutva leaders and vocal critics of state party chief B.Y Vijayendra. The list had no mention of Vijayapura MLA Basanagouda Patil Yatnal, Gokak MLA Ramesh Jarkiholi and former Mysuru MP and Hindutva leader Pratap Simha. Besides the star campaigners, former chief minister and Haveri MP Bommai and his wife Chennamma are campaigning for their entrepreneur son Bharat, who will be making his debut in electoral politics in Shiggaon.
In Sandur, where the BJP has chosen the state SC Morcha president Bangaru Hanumanthu as its candidate, controversial mining baron and Gangavathi MLA G. Janaradhan Reddy and Valmiki leader and former MP B. Sriramulu buried the hatchet and started campaigning together. In the late 1990s, the duo transformed Ballari district from a Congress bastion to a BJP forte. But the friends turned into foes after Reddy was jailed in the illegal mining case (now on bail). In May 2023, Reddy floated a new party, Kalyana Rajya Pragati Paksha, and won the Gangavathi seat, only to merge his party with the BJP.
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The Janata Dal Secular, which is now part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is battling it out to retain Channapatna. Union minister Kumaraswamy is leaving no stone unturned to ensure the victory of his actor son Nikhil Kumaraswamy (who has lost two elections previously). The star campiagners’ list has excluded the name of JD(S) core committee president and MLA G.T. Devegowda who had publicly endorsed Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, when the NDA partners had held a ‘padayatra’ from Bengaluru to Mysuru to call out the chief minister embroiled in the MUDA land allotment scam.
Kumaraswamy has roped in prominent BJP leaders including veteran B.S. Yediyurappa, royal scion and Mysuru-Kodagu MP Yaduveer Wadiyar, who enjoys the goodwill of the people in the region. In a bid to woo the voters in a constituency dominated by Vokkaliga, Muslim and other backward classes, the former CM has held closed-door meetings with the minority community and is planning to bring his father and Vokkaliga icon H.D. Deve Gowda for the campaign.
Interestingly, Kumaraswamy is facing the challenge from fellow Vokkaliga and Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar and his younger brother D.K. Suresh, who want to capture Channapatna, the only constituency in the district that’s not in the Congress’s kitty. The brothers managed to bring BJP leader and former MLA C.P. Yogeshwar on board, but are now fighting the fury of local Congress leaders who are miffed over the party giving a ticket to a partyhopper.
The ruling Congress appears to have put all its might behind their candidates in these bypolls and has assigned a dozen ministers and 20 MLAs to each of the three seats. The party has worked out the caste combination and picked the ministers from the communities that dominate these seats.
While Channapatna continues to hog the limelight, the party has assigned the responsibility of winning Shiggaon to ministers Zameer Ahmed Khan and Laxmi Hebbalkar (Panchamasali Lingayat) owing to the dominance of Muslims and Panchamasalis in the constituency.
In Sandur, Annapurna, the Congress nominee, is campaigning along with her husband and Ballari MP Tukaram as senior leaders were conspicuous by their absence in the constituency. Both CM and the DCM are likely to campaign in Sandur post Diwali.