The announcement of the candidature of former Mysore district in-charge minister H Viswanath and the overwhelming clout former deputy chief minister Siddaramaiah enjoys in the region is likely to pose a big challenge for the BJP in the Mysore parliamentary constituency.
No doubt, sitting BJP candidate C H Vijayashankar is way ahead of the other two chief challengers, Viswanath of the Congress and B A Jeeviaya of the Janata Dal (S), in the election campaign run as he has already completed one round of campaign.
However, the announcement of Viswanath as the Congress candidate will make the BJP work overtime to meet the challenge posed by the former district in-charge minister on the one hand and the popularity of Siddaramaiah on the other.
Coming from the same Kuruba community as Vijayashankar, Viswanath would no doubt split the Kuruba votes in the constituency, a matter to be borne in mind by the BJP. Apart from this challenge, Viswanath, as the former distrct in-charge minister and former minister for Kannada and Culture, is well known in the constituency. The BJP needs to keep this too in its mind in its campaign strategy.
Siddaramaiah is a popular and influential leader in the region, especially in Mysore district. He too began the campaign early without waiting for the candidates to be announced by the party. The former deputy chief minister was successful in having a good number of his supporters elected to the Assembly in the last assembly elections. In the choice of the party’s nominees to Lok Sabha, he is said to have made a good bargain.
The fact that his strong supporter R Dhruvanarayan is given ticket for the Chamarajanagar Parliamentary Constituency, against the hopeful M Shivanna, a sitting MP, who backed the Congress at a crucial juncture in Lok Sabha, deserting the Janata Dal (S), is an example for this. Defying the party directions, Shivanna voted in favour of the Manmohan Singh government six months ago, when the vote on no-confidence was taken up, and subsequently joined the Congress, assured of a ticket for the Lok Sabha polls.
As in the last Assembly elections, Siddaramaiah no doubt will go all out to see his supporters fare well in the Lok Sabha elections too, apart from other Congress candidates in the state, to perform better in this Parliamentary polls than in the previous one.
Aware of these challenges posed by the Congress, chief mnister B S Yeddyurappa, during his campaign in Mysore on Tuesday, along with district in-charge Minister Shoba Karandlaje, made this amply clear to party leaders in Mysore, and told them to impress upon the voters on his Government’s special importance for the development of Mysore.
With a view to build up its Vokkaliga strength in the district, BJP reportedly made a futile bid to draw disgruntled Congress leader D Made Gowda into its fold. the former MLA had opposed ticket to Viswanath.
All these indicate that it will be tough going for BJP in Mysore.
