It was at the peak of the Karnataka Assembly election campaigns in April 2023 that former chief minister Jagadish Shettar gave a jolt to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by snapping their three-decade-old ties – citing "ill-treatment and humiliation" – and joining the Congress party.
Elated Congress leaders had arranged for a chartered flight for him to reach Bengaluru from his home turf Hubballi on 16 April 2023, even before Shettar had announced his intent to join the party. He was, after all, considered a 'prized possession' being a Lingayat from the Kittur Karnataka (erstwhile Mumbai-Karnataka) region.
In the last nine months, one could say that Shettar was treated with utmost respect by the Congress, even though he lost the Hubballi-Dharwad Central Assembly seat by a huge margin of 34,289 votes to a political debutante from the BJP. He was made a member of the Karnataka Legislative Council in June 2023 and was included in the 58-member state Congress Election Committee recently.
But taking a leaf out of his own playbook, Shettar on Thursday, 25 January 2024, flew to New Delhi and had a quick meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah in the presence of BJP veteran BS Yediyurappa and his son and Karnataka state unit president BY Vijayendra. Within minutes, he was back in the saffron fold.
He sent his resignation letters (for the Congress primary membership as well as his MLC post) via email to Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president DK Shivakumar and Council Chairman Basavaraj Horatti.
Speaking to the media in New Delhi, Shettar said:
"The BJP gave me a lot of responsibilities in the past. Because of some issues, I went to the Congress party. In the last 8-9 months, there were a lot of discussions in the BJP. Karnataka BJP leaders and workers asked me to come back and Yediyurappa and Vijayendra also wanted me to return. I am rejoining the party for the well-being of the country and with the belief that Narendra Modi has to become the PM again."
What This Means for the Congress
Taken by surprise by this move, Shivakumar said: "When the BJP denied the Hubballi-Dharwad Central ticket to him, was he not aware of the country's well-being? Even though the voters rejected Shettar by a huge margin, the Congress made him an MLC and we treated him with respect. I have a conscience and he has too."
According to Shivakumar, Shettar is said to have met him two days ago, saying that the BJP was sending him feelers – and that he would not go back as the Congress had given him a 'political rebirth'. "This made me confident to tell the media on Wednesday that Shettar will not leave the Congress," he added.
On the other hand, Labour Minister Santosh Lad, who is also the in-charge of Dharwad district, said he was personally happy that Shettar has quit. "When he joined the Congress, not a single BJP corporator came to the party with him. Now that he is gone, no one has followed him out. He has made zero impact. He came alone and went alone," Lad maintained.
Lad further said that Shettar's entry into the Congress did not help the party in securing the votes of the Lingayats, the community he represents. "If Shettar had been successful in pulling the Lingayat votes, the BJP's vote share should have dropped, but it managed to retain its vote share of 36 percent of the 2018 Assembly polls," he added.
Shettar's exit from the Congress is also a big letdown for senior Congress MLA Shamnur Shivashankarappa and Large and Medium Industries Minister MB Patil. Both of them had played a pivotal role in getting him into the party, in addition to providing the logistics for the same.
Shamnur's second son SS Ganesh, who is a business magnate, had provided the chartered flight to ferry Shettar from Hubballi to Bengaluru back in April. All three of them are related through marital ties. Ganesh's daughter is married to Patil's son and Shivashankarappa's granddaughter is married to Shettar's son.
What Next for Shettar?
According to BJP sources, the party is likely to field him from the Belagavi Lok Sabha seat, replacing sitting MP Mangala Suresh Angadi. It is said that Shettar, whose political moorings were in the Jana Sangh and RSS, and who was responsible for building the BJP along with Yediyurappa from scratch, realised his growth would be stunted in the Congress.
A person who was once the Chief Minister, the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, an Opposition leader, a state unit president, and a minister is learnt to have "not warmed up" to the Congress workers in Hubballi-Dharwad.
"The Congress leadership sidelined loyal party workers and gave Shettar all the honour and respect. In the Assembly elections, he lost by 34,289 votes, a margin by which the Congress has never been defeated. What did the party gain from Shettar?" KPCC Bengaluru coordinator Vasant Ladawa, who hails from Dharwad district, asked.
The readmission of 68-year-old Shettar into the BJP also signals the complete command of the father-son duo – Yediyurappa and Vijayendra – on the party, with the BJP's national general secretary (organisation) BL Santhosh being allegedly sidelined.
Yediyurappa and Santhosh never saw eye-to-eye when the former was Chief Minister from 2008 to 2011, and at one point, the central leadership reportedly asked Santhosh to stay away from Karnataka politics. Moreover, Shettar's return is said to have been kept under wraps, and many party seniors were taken by surprise.
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