Siddaramaiah Loses 25 Party Leaders From His Home Turf to JD(S)

The leaders have defected days after JD(S) leaders challenged to defeat Siddaramaiah in his own constituency.

The rivalry with his former party, the Janata Dal (Secular), is coming back to haunt Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah as he prepares for the big Assembly elections in the state.

After JD(S) leader HD Kumaraswamy challenged that he would defeat Siddaramaiah in his own constituency, 25 booth-level Congress leaders in the Chamundeshwari constituency of Mysuru, from where Siddaramaiah is expected to contest, defected to the JD(S) on Wednesday, 4 April.

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Though Siddaramaiah is the tallest leader of the Congress party, until 2005, he was part of the JD(S) and was considered a prodigy of party supremo and former prime minister HD Deve Gowda. However, Gowda threw Siddaramaiah out of the party following some differences. Since then, the rivalry between them has played a prominent part in Karnataka’s politics.

The 25 turncoat leaders include Umashankar, who was the director of the boards of Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF) and Mysore District Cooperative Central bank; MH Mahadeveswamy, chief of cooperative society in Chamundeshwari; Rajashekharamurthy, a former Youth Congress member; Kalinga Nayak, a former panchayat member, and Dalit leader GM Mandani.

Siddaramaiah had contested the last two elections from adjacent Varuna constituency. He gave up his stronghold for his son, Dr Yathindra, who will be making his political debut this elections.

Before moving to Varuna, Siddaramaiah had contested from Chamudeshwari constituency seven times – he won five times but lost twice. However, Siddaramaiah had contested from Chamundeshwari before the delimitation of the constituencies in the state, and the original constituency consisted of both current Chamundeshwari and Varuna constituencies.

This means that this would be the first time Siddaramaiah would be contesting from Chamundeshwari constituency after the delimitation.

But the Karnataka chief minister is pinning his hopes on caste equations in the constituency. According to the Congress, there are around 70,000 Vokkaligas, 30,000 Lingayats and close to one lakh AHINDA (backward classes, minorities and Dalits) voters in the region.

While the JD(S) enjoys the support of Vokkaliga voters, Lingayats are considered a BJP vote bank. Unless these two vote banks are united, Siddaramaiah holds the upper hand. However, it remains to be seen if Congress leaders who defected to the JD(S) can influence the vote bank against Siddaramaiah.

The Congress is also exploring the option of fielding Siddaramaiah from two constituencies. While discussions are on for the same, the Election Commission has filed an affidavit before the Supreme Court supporting the plea filed by lawyer Ashwini Upadhyay demanding that a candidate can contest only from one seat.