NB Explains | Will Lingayat leader Jagadish Shettar's exit from BJP cause any major impact on the party ahead of polls?

In the most unexpected development in Karnataka politics ahead of its 2023 assembly elections, former Karnataka chief minister Jagadish Shettar, & second senior Lingayat leader of BJP, was denied a ticket by the party. With that, he will contest, for the very first time in his life, on a Congress ticket from the Hubballi-Dharwad central seat.

 

 

He joined the Congress party in the presence of party president Mallikarjun Kharge, KPCC president DK Shivakumar and Congress leaders Randeep Surjewala, and Siddaramaiah at the party office in Bengaluru.

 

 

 

Shettar's decision came after the BJP's central leadership made it clear that he would not be accommodated this time. He submitted his resignation to the Assembly Speaker Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri at Sirsi in Uttara Kannada district.

 

The last-ditch efforts of senior party leaders, including the BJP's election in-charge for Karnataka, Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Minister Pralhad Joshi, and Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Saturday to persuade the Hubli-Dharwad Central MLA to change his mind, paid no fruits as he quit as a legislator.

 

Formally inducting Shettar into the Congress, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said, "Rahul Gandhi has requested that we win 135 or more seats and come to power. With Shettar joining Congress, we are confident that we will get 150 seats. There’s no question that he’ll not be elected, he will be elected."

 

After joining Congress, he warned the saffron party that his resignation and future decisions will impact at least 20-25 seats in the state. He attacked the current leadership in the state. "Some vested interests have hijacked the BJP in Karnataka. They are destroying the party. It is no longer the BJP, we built".

 

At this point, it should be noted that Shettar is the second senior Lingayat leader after former deputy chief minister Laxman Savadi who quit the BJP and joined the Congress. The Lingayat community forms close to 17-18 per cent of Karnataka’s voting population and also has a major say in the formation of governments in the state. It is being said that the veteran leader’s move to quit the party and join Congress has certainly shaken the BJP to its core. Even Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai accepted that Shettar’s exit will have an effect "but damage control exercise will be conducted to minimise the impact", he said.

 

A born RSS and a Jana Sangh member j Shettar is a six-time MLA from the Huballi-Dharwad central constituency. Shettar is credited with building BJP. Shettar’s uncle was a Jana Sangh MLA in 1967 and his father became the first Jana Sangh Mayor of Hubli-Dharwad in 1977. His uncle Sadashiv Shettar was an influential figure who played an instrumental role in Jan Sangh's limited rise in North Karnataka in the 60s.

 

Shettar was fielded by the party candidate from Hubli Rural in the 1994 state assembly elections, and he scored his maiden victory by a margin of over 15,000 votes defeating current CM Basavaraj Bommai, then Janata Dal candidate. The Hubli region has a nearly 20% Lingayat population. The region has been widely considered to be a fiefdom of the Shettars for many decades.

 

In 2008, following the BJP victory in the Karnataka assembly elections, Shettar was unanimously elected as the Speaker of the Karnataka legislative assembly. However, he resigned from this post in 2009 and was inducted into the cabinet of B.S. Yeddyurappa as Minister for Rural Development and Panchayat Raj.

 

Under Shettar’s leadership, the BJP was routed in the 2013 Assembly elections mainly because of BSY’s Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP), which took away 10% of BJP votes. He became the CM in 2012-’13 when the BJP needed a Lingayat face following the brief exit of Yediyurappa who formed the Karnataka Janata Party. However, Shettar soon resigned as Chief Minister as BJP failed to retain its power.

 

His support is considered crucial for the BJP to win the Dharwad Lok Sabha seat. The current BJP MP from the seat, Pralhad Joshi, a Brahmin, is considered to have relied heavily on Shettar’s clout to win Dharwad since it was created in the pre-Narendra Modi era in 2009.

 

The BJP is yet to declare a candidate for the seat for which Shettar is the incumbent MLA. The exit of two major BJP players Shettar and Laxman Savadi, both Lingayat leaders, will certainly have an impact on the party’s fortunes. Looking at the current situation, Shettar can be a game changer for Congress as he can emerge as the Lingayat face of Congress.

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