The BJP, it has been reported, spent up to R23 lakh in transporting 114 of its MLAs from various parts of Karnataka to Delhi for a 15-minute photo opportunity in front of the Rashtrapati Bhawan. Much money is spent on political drama of various kinds in the country, you might say, so what is a few lakhs here and there. The money spent, in fact, was not a waste. The party was successfully able to shift the contours of the debate sparked off by the Karnataka High Court?s quashing of the disqualification of 11 MLAs by the Speaker of the Assembly. The day the quashing orders came, the immediate reaction across
political spectrum was that the vote of confidence won by the Yeddyurappa government in Karnataka, held after these MLAs had been disqualified, was a tainted one.
The Governor of Karnataka?s report and his confrontation with the government, however, made it look as though it was yet another example of the Centre?s high handedness vis-?-vis legitimately elected, Opposition-led, state governments. The photo-op at the President?s palace in Delhi was a clever ploy by the BJP to make it seem a Centre-state issue rather than a moral one, where it knew it was on a slippery slope.
How did this happen? Quite simply, the 11 disqualified BJP MPs have now had a change of heart and are back in the party fold. They claimed that they didn?t want Yeddyurappa as chief minister, but wanted the BJP to choose someone else. All well and good, but allegation of money facilitating this change of heart has dogged the government and, in fact,
Operation Kamala (or lotus), wherein large amounts of money is used to
buy up the entire political opposition in the state is a well proven tactic of the BJP in the state.
The Congress, on its part, therefore, did not need to bring in the heavy guns, like the Governor. This was more of a morality tale that had to be slowly brought to a climax. The BJP government in Karnataka is no better or worse than others and has quite a few skeletons in its cupboard, including allegations of pandering to the mining mafia on the scale of the 2G scam.
In this scenario, the Congress party in the state has to take a few lessons from the newly elected Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa. When the 2G scam first broke, in 2008, she was still hiding out in her Kodanadu retreat. She played up the scam in the General Elections in 2009, but failed to sway the voter. A limited strength in Parliament in
Delhi, however, was leveraged by her to get together the entire Opposition in embarrassing the DMK every day in Parliament. In 2010, her luck changed, the technically difficult to explain scam could be, thanks to the CAG report, explained in just one figure: R1,76,000 crore. A sum so colossal that AIADMK chief?s own scams looked like pocket change to buy an extra pair of shoes.
A campaign mounted on that figure, with a national outcry against corruption to back it and a party in power that appeared to be unravelling in familial knots, made the critical difference. At the bottom of it was a morality tale of family feuds and murky deals and the power of a fair election to settle scores.
The Congress in Karnataka is up against something similar, the BJP in the state is a divided house, murky deals are being made and a chief minister wrapped in superstition alleges absurd allegations of witchcraft against his opponents. All they need to do is shed the strong-arm tactics and think like the little guy. They need to be the man on the street, rather than the governor in the Raj Bhavan to uproot an elected government. They have precisely two years,
almost the same length of time as the AIADMK, to win over public opinion. For that, they need to slog at the fight in the streets, and the next march at President?s palace could well be theirs.
nistula.hebbar@expressindia.com