Bommai in unstable times

Union Home Minister Amit Shah went to Karnataka on May 3 for a sports event. During that visit, he was supposed to meet the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) core committee, and Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai was to host all Cabinet ministers, MLAs, and MPs, for lunch. The chief minister had envisaged the whole event as a power shot in the arm for himself, beleaguered as he is, though he hasn’t even completed a year in office.

He needn’t have taken the trouble. BJP Organising Secretary B L Santhosh arrived in Bengaluru a day before and, speaking to party workers at Mysuru, said “we” would be the ones to decide how tickets were to be distributed in the Karnataka Assembly election (due next year). He also said: “We have four chief ministers younger than 50 years. And the average age is 56.5 years, that’s because of two people. If they step down, then the average will come down further. The average age of the central cabinet is 57 years.”

Mr Bommai is 62. Rattled, that evening Mr Bommai ditched his official car, claxon, and convoy, and, accompanied by State Power Minister V Sunil Kumar, drove in an unmarked car to meet RSS General Secretary Dattatreya Hosabale. He may have sought some sort of reassurance. Apparently he didn’t get it because Mr Shah finished lunch in 18 minutes (many MLAs didn’t even get a glimpse of him), completed some other engagements, and returned to Delhi without offering any sort of reassurance (or assurance, for that matter) to the chief minister.

A few days later, Mr Bommai met the Union home minister in Delhi and sought postponement of cabinet expansion. No one knows what he was told because he returned to Bengaluru and said publicly “anything can happen any time”.

As chief minister, Mr Bommai is getting very little organisational support. Part of it is his own fault, some of it is because of the unquenched ambition of others.

Last week, BJP MLA Basanagouda Patil Yatnal claimed he had been approached by “some people” who said they could make him chief minister if he paid them Rs 2,500 crore. Saleem Ahmed, the Congress working president in Karnataka, has urged the BJP to release a list giving the rates for the various posts: “Such as for CM post, Rs 2,500 crore; for ministerial berths in the state cabinet, Rs 100 crore; for police commissioner’s post, Rs 5 crore; for DCP post, Rs 3 crore, and others” (sic). Nalin Kateel, BJP president for Karnataka, said a notice would be served on Mr Yatnal. It is not known if that has happened.

Mr Yatnal, like Mr Bommai, is a Lingayat. So is Industries Minister Murgesh Nirani. The two can’t stand each other. Mr Bommai revels in playing one off against the other. The same goes for Arvind Bellad, MLA from Hubbali-Dharwad, and Jagadish Shettar, former chief minister. Mr Bellad was better-positioned to be chief minister but the high command chose Mr Bommai. This still rankles.

This is not all. Mr Bommai, who is an import to the BJP, has many friends in the opposition. It is only a rumour that details of the police recruitment exam “scam” (where parents paid Rs 30-80 lakh to “agents” to facilitate cheating) were passed on to the opposition from the government. For the Congress, it was such a prize that, otherwise at daggers drawn, Siddaramaiah and D K Shivakumar came together to address a joint press conference. An important Vokkaliga MLA who is a minister and could have been a threat to Mr Bommai has been implicated and a gleeful opposition, armed with all the information (gosh, wonder where they got it all from!), is baying for his blood.

Faced with all this, and the plummeting image of the government, at least four ministers and a clutch of MLAs had planned to jump ship had the last round of the Assembly elections gone against the BJP. A minister in the government, MTB Nagaraj, has said publicly that he now thought moving to the BJP from Janata Dal (Secular), or JD(S), was a “mistake”. “I didn’t want to do it. I was made to do it,” he said. An MLA from Mangaluru wants to give his seat to his son and shift closer to Bengaluru. He is almost certain to defect to the Congress if he is thwarted. There are a few others.

For the BJP, Old Mysore, with 61 seats, becomes crucial to retaining its position. In this region the party has never gone beyond 14 seats. Old Mysore is JD(S) territory. The party needs people who can secure Old Mysore for it. Without that, the government is looking at a serious setback in the upcoming Assembly elections.