It hasn’t rained in Karnataka, but it’s pouring chief ministers! Hopefully, by Monday, we will have one man in place, instead of the two that are floating around, not clear whether they should be smiling in the face of all this uncertainty, or looking smug because they know something we don’t!

Anyway, gag order from Delhi or no, the signals point in one direction. The BJP top brass has convened in Delhi. Barring a last minute hitch or a change of mind, a new chief minister is a foregone conclusion. A resignation on Sunday. An announcement of the new man in the saddle by Monday. A swearing-in early mid-week.

More about the man in the hot seat later — does Jagadish Shettar know what he’s in for? But what is most fascinating is to see the normally edgy Mr Yeddyurappa’s plan slowly come to fruition. Eleven months late, but hey, who’s complaining?

Barring the hapless Sadananda Gowda of course, who had hoped he would hoist the tricolour this Independence Day, and mark at least a year in office before giving way to the inevitable. One doesn’t want to write a requiem just yet. But Sadananda Gowda’s monumental error was of course his inability to read the political grains in the sand.

Lulled into a false sense of complacency, he was led on by the Machiavellian father and son duo of Mr Deve Gowda and H.D. Kumaraswamy into believing that he was the one, the anointed leader of the Vokkaliga community before whom they would all genuflect! Fat chance, when that role had long ago been co-opted from under the Congress’ nose by the Old Mysore Gowda clan who had no plans to hand it on a platter to the parvenu. For the Gowda pop and son show, Sadananda Gowda, would never be anything more than a stepping stone on the slippery road back to power.

The reaching out from the JD(S) biggies came shortly after Sadananda Gowda became chief minister. Curiously, no-one in the canny inner circle of the chief minister’s camp figured out what was behind the sudden Gowda to Gowda bonhomie.

To the rest of the world, their strategy was so obvious it was laughable. The plan? Well, first drive a wedge between their sworn enemy Yeddyurappa and his chosen successor, Sadananda Gowda with the afore-mentioned tapping into the emotional linkage of caste. And second, watch as yet another JD(S) strategy to undermine the BJP government went into play. No cash involved this time. Cost them nothing! And voila! There you had it — the JD(S) third attempt — or is it the fourth, one loses count — to bring down the BJP government in its present form and resurrect another from the ashes.

Indeed, in co-opting Sadananda Gowda, they came closer to toppling the government than at any other time in the past. Would the JD(S) have gone through with their promised support from the outside to DVS, in the event BSY had been provoked enough to go through with his own threat of walking out with his phalanx of supporters? Would the Governor then have dissolved the house and brought in a caretaker government where the Congress, would once again have a say in a state over which they had long lost their hold? And would BSY have played ball with the Congress to get the CBI off his back? A quid pro quo against the bigger evil - the Vokkaliga hostile takeover of the Lingayat dominated BJP government.

Questions, questions... fewer answers. All smoke and mirrors. But clearly, it wasn’t long before BSY, facing jail time and a CBI grilling, realised he had been had. Here he was, secure in the belief that he had put a man in place who could be trusted to safeguard his interests, his legacy, his people. Instead, he came up against a wall.

Impenetrable. Opaque. A Sadananda Gowda who just wouldn’t play ball. Shobha Karandlaje, BSY’s confidante and said to aspire to be chief minister herself — missing, if you haven’t noticed, from all the action to replace her choice for interim CM —was embarrassed when the new chief minister convened a meeting on the power crisis in the state. And conveniently forgot to tell her. That the ministers loyal to BSY were giving the Vidhana Soudha and governance, a go-by was no secret. Or, that the well-meaning Sadananda Gowda meant to put in an honest day’s work.

But when has a badge of honesty alone won elections? And two signal defeats, back to back electoral reverses where BSY sat it out, firmly on the sidelines, drove home the point. Losing a seat in Bellary where a sizeable Lingayat vote could have been mobilized to negate the Valmiki and backward community leader

Sreeramulu was bad enough. To get a drubbing in your home constituency, one that you had given up to become a chief minister, was the eye-opener for the BJP, supposedly strong in the coastal districts, where BSY held no real sway. The cold, harsh reality was this — the mood in the state was clearly veering away from the holier-than-thou saffronistas, mired in corruption cases, working at cross-purposes to undermine each other.

While no-one is apologising for his brand of political brinkmanship, BSY hadn’t come this far to have his puppet destroy his hard fought position as the only Lingayat leader in the state. He had to replace him with someone more malleable. Now, one doesn’t want to rain on Mr Shettar’s parade even before he’s been formally proclaimed chief minister designate and sworn in as the BJP’s third chief minister in as many years. But does he realize he is walking into the maw of the lion.

If reports are true and ‘Mr Nice Guy 2’ is as pliable as everyone says he is, that could be a bigger problem for BSY than the sharp DVS who, remember, was not immune to the HDK charm offensive. I mean, what guarantee Shettar will be willing to play second fiddle forever?

Shettar’s change of heart, as well as BSY’s turning him into the flavour of the month is curious. One theory is that his poor showing in the CM vote last year revealed how he would never be able to challenge BSY’s pre-eminence in the Lingayat pecking order. The other factor is that the mathas, upset at losing the CM slot to a Vokkaliga, upped the pressure on Shettar to join hands with the man who had parked him as Speaker rather than give him a ministry. But the lead role in this successful putsch has been played by a host of others. One of them, whom BSY assidously built up is Basavaraj Bommai, son of Janata Dal stalwart S.R. Bommai, and a rival for the leadership of Hubli and North Karnataka. What gives? Has Bommai been entrusted with the keys of the kingdom? The shepherd to the wayward Shettar who many believe maybe a Trojan horse for the other Hubli strongman, Ananth Kumar (who some say has finally missed the CM bus!)? How long before BSY pulls the plug on Shettar if he does a Sadananda Gowda on him?

The fact is, DVS or Shettar, the next six to ten months is a huge bonus for the BJP. Its a chance to retrieve ground that few parties or governments have ever been given. For all the doubts and the bad press, if ‘Chief Minister Shettar’ and his supposedly mammoth cabinet can turn the state around, who knows, there may be no stopping Yeddyurappa — in jail or out — from laying claim to the title he’s always hankered after. No prizes for guessing what that is. Or for figuring out what’s next, if they botch this one up.