King of the split mandate

BACKSTAGE

Former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda must be having the last laugh. He had warned his son, H D Kumaraswamy not to do a deal with the BJP when the Janata Dal (S) withdrew support from the Congress-led Dharam Singh government in the state in 2006. If elections had been held then, maybe the problems created by the badly-hung Assembly that voters sent to the Karnataka Vidhana Soudha in 2004 would have been resolved more democratically than what we're seeing now.

But as the Karnataka government teeters on the brink and Assembly elections seem virtually inevitable, you could ask yourself why Deve Gowda is so important in Karnataka politics.

That Gowda leads the Vokkaligas, a politically powerful as well as economically influential caste in Karnataka is well known. What is not so clearly understood is the complexion of the Congress and the BJP, which are so badly faction-ridden that Deve Gowda's Janata Dal (S) will continue to be a deciding force in Karnataka for the foreseeable future.

When the Ramakrishna Hegde-led anti-BJP, anti-Congress grouping collapsed in Karnataka and Hegde himself decided to go with the BJP, Deve Gowda realised his relevance in the state. This was underscored by the vacuum left in Karnataka politics after Hegde's death. Some of Hegde's supporters joined Deve Gowda. But most left the Janata family to join the Congress, seriously threatening the internal political balance there, but working as a solid phalanx to steer the Congress in one direction "" away from Deve Gowda. It is this group that fomented Kuruba leader Siddramiah's revolt in the Janata Dal (S) and helped bring down the Dharam Singh-led Congress government.

Factions in the BJP, as we have seen in the last 10 days, have prevented the accession of Yediyurappa to the chief ministership because of internal contradictions. There is a group in the BJP that would rather see Deve Gowda "" or his nominee "" ensconced as chief minister than a Yediyurappa. This has caused wires to be crossed within the BJP, a situation that Deve Gowda has exploited to his advantage with skill and finesse.

At Friday night's meeting with BJP president Rajnath Singh, Gowda spent the 90 minutes he had with Singh to blame all coalition troubles on Advani loyalists Venkaiah Naidu and Ananth Kumar. He said that Kumaraswamy faced interference from both the leaders on each and every developmental issue, including the Bangalore-Mysore industrial corridor project.

Gowda demonstrated his knowledge of BJP's own dynamics by keeping lines of communication open with Rajnath Singh rather than with L K Advani. Rajnath Singh's aides admit that in case of another hung Assembly, the state can never have a Congress-BJP government. "It will always be a JD(S)-BJP or a JD(S)-Congress government. In such a situation, despite betraying us, Gowda is trying to keep his options open," said an aide.

Unless the people of Karnataka vote decisively for one party as the electorate did in Uttar Pradesh, Deve Gowda is likely to be in business for a long time. His trapeze work between the two national parties has befuddled the best political managers, but the man who became prime minister with barely 16 MPs in 1996 has more politics left in him than people have given him credit for.