If corruption-related difficulties have defined the current political season in Maharashtra and New Delhi, and heads have rolled and investigations been launched, this is not entirely the case with BJP-run Karnataka, which the saffron party has sought to project as its citadel in South India from which it hoped to exert its influence elsewhere
in the region. From the time the B.S. Yeddyurappa government took office in May 2008, it has been rocked by a succession of crises, almost each traceable to corruption, to attempts at subverting the administrative élan of the state by mining lobbies that sharply divide sections of the BJP leadership in the state and at the national level, and to factional rifts that run deep and serve to project the ambitions of a few, probably not without a modicum of encouragement from elements in the BJP’s national leadership. Barely a month ago, the Yeddyurappa ministry survived a major setback when a section of party MLAs was made to rise in revolt through the stratagem of insider enemies of the chief minister as well as the machinations of the JD(S), the main Opposition bloc in the Assembly. In the space of a few weeks, Mr Yeddyurappa is once again an embattled leader. If many had sympathised with him a month ago, he is directly in the line of fire this time around for strategising to permit denotified government land to pass into the hands of members of his family and close friends for a song, although these were later surrendered. Unfortunately for the BJP’s only mass leader in the state, it is hard to summon any defence against something like this. That some of his predecessors may have traversed a similar path is an alibi that holds neither in legal terms nor political. In short, Karnataka under the BJP has not turned out to be a model that any state would wish to emulate.
Whether Mr Yeddyurappa himself sees matters in this light or not, after agonising deliberation the top leadership of his party is reported to have come to the view that their poster boy in Karnataka has crossed all the red lines and is no longer worthy of being defended in public and expending political capital on any further. At a time when the BJP is sharpening its knives to get at the Prime Minister in New Delhi in the wake of the 2G spectrum irregularities (especially when Dr Manmohan Singh’s probity remains beyond question), their concern with high-voltage corruption in Karnataka seems to be motivated by appearing to be proper rather than necessarily being proper. On earlier occasions, when the Congress in New Delhi was not in their direct line of fire, they have heard shouts of corruption and mischief-mongering emanating from Karnataka but kept their ears plugged. This underlines for observers that the BJP leadership has now seized on expediency, it has not seized the high moral ground. Mr Yeddyurappa surely appreciates the nuance and is apt to see himself as the sacrificial lamb. Someone like him — a community figure for decades and the state’s tallest Lingayat leader — cannot be pleased about this, not least because he also views himself as having no peers within his state party. If he is arm twisted into quitting by the BJP leadership, will he go quietly? This is a question that will trouble the party brass. The BJP’s past in Karnataka has had a good deal to do with Mr Yeddyurappa political abilities. What will the party’s future in the state look like without him is a question that is certain to worry many in the leadership, and also in the RSS which remote-controls the BJP. The picture is at best muddy. Karnataka could not have bet it will be on a rollercoaster under a BJP administration.