Did Shettar miss the boat?

Oct 07, 2012 - R Jayaprakash |

Tags:

Would the Cauvery issue have taken a completely different turn if Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar had stuck to his guns and not released water to Tamil Nadu as he had planned? Insiders who were part of the all party meeting said that the Hubli leader and now chief minister, had told his party colleagues and rivals from other parties that he was planning to court arrest rather than release water to TN.

But perhaps aware that the little known Shettar would then emerge as a ‘statesman’ and be feted in the Cauvery basin, something that none of the CMs from the basin including S.M. Krishna, H.D. Kumaraswamy, Deve Gowda or B.S. Yeddyurappa would have liked, given the political mileage he would have gained, he was stopped in his tracks by political bigwigs cutting across party lines. They would have to live with the fact that with this one masterstroke, a second-rung leader in the BJP from North Karnataka would become a cult figure in the Cauvery basin.

“He had made up his mind not to release water and was prepared to go to jail for the people of Cauvery basin. A calculated but risky proposition that would have made him a hero overnight. But, Shettar finally acceded to the pulls and pressure of veteran leaders from the state,” an insider said.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/193770" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-12ba949d43483434bd801216443a8db8" value="form-12ba949d43483434bd801216443a8db8" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="86848392" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>