Key Contests : Veerappa Moily vs Sadananda Gowda

MANDATE 2004/ LS CONSTITUENCY WATCH - Karnataka

No, you can't see Aishwarya Rai walking on the streets although if you are patient, you might spot Sunil Shetty, because he visits this town frequently on account of business and land interests here.

You might catch a glimpse of Shilpa Shetty on one of her annual visits and George Fernandes, whose ancestral home here is now the headquarters of the Samata Party, also comes here as often as he can.

Mangalore is a city of the rich and the beautiful but the very poor "" bidi rollers, fishermen, weavers and wage labourers and backward communities "" also live here.

The latter loosely constitute the support base of the Congress, while the BJP voters are the upper castes, the Bunts (small feudatories with large landed interests) and Saraswat Brahmins.

Mangalore is the Karnataka headquarters of the BJP-RSS. But it is also the region that has contributed two powerful personalities to the Congress "" current Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee President and former Minister of State for Finance Janardhana Poojary and former Chief Minister and Chairman of the Revenue Reforms Committee appointed by the Krishna government, Veerappa Moily.

Moily is contesting the Lok Sabha election from this constituency, while the BJP has fielded Sadananda Gowda, replacing former Union Minister of State Dhananjay Kumar, who was the sitting BJP MP in 1999 from the constituency.

Behind the change is the story of the limits to BJP's growth in Karnataka, because Mangalore shows it is just too weighed down with its preoccupation with organisational caste purity.

Dhananjay Kumar is not the only one to accuse the BJP of an upper caste bias. K Jayaram Shetty, belonging to the powerful and rich but socially lower caste of Bunts, and associated with the BJP for 25 years having been an MLA between 1994 and 1999, left the party, citing caste.

Rukmay Poojary, who represented the Vithala Assembly constituency in the last assembly, which has a 52 per cent Muslim population, also left the BJP.

"The BJP is not for the lower castes. That is the Congress," said Raghuram, a journalist who has studied the BJP's growth and development in the region. "Poojary, low caste," said Latha, a housewife. "We will vote for our party "" the lotus," she added.

The BJP, recognising that between Poojary and Moily, the Congress has sewn up a formidable caste coalition of toddy-tapper, drummers and other backward communities, is concentrating on ensuring minorities "" both Christian and Muslims "" stay with it.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi, who visited Mangalore on Tuesday, exhorted Christians and Muslims to come out of their homes to vote.

The Muslim turnout is nearly 80 per cent while only 35 per cent of the Christians vote in these elections. This time, because of Gandhi's appeal, things may change. A low turnout from the areas where the minorities live, could change the outcome of the election.

A higher turnout could be motivated by the fact that Suratkal on the outskirts of Mangalore saw 12 die during the communal riots in 1998. Everyone, from cyber cafe owners to hired help and small shopowners talks of how riots could recur if the BJP wins the Mangalore Assembly seat this time, of which the chances are good.

However, the BJP is not sitting idle. Several Muslim leaders are thinking of supporting the BJP, especially after Vajpayee's call to them. "But these are 'good' people, the leaders. Whether the voters will follow them is an open question," Raghuram said.

Mangalore is being developed apace. Infosys has set up a unit here that earns around Rs 150 crore from software exports. However, low quality supply of power is one reason retarding development here.

A potentially controversial issue is the Karnataka government's decision to call for a survey of the Nethravathi river that supplies water to the region to find out if it could be made to change its course and create a garland of canals that could provide water to Bangalore among other regions. The decline in water supply for irrigation is already making farmers restive.

The contest in Mangalore on Monday promises to be worth watching, although the majority and minority communities are awaiting the result with some trepidation.