For long in shadows, Shettar is at centre of Karnataka crisis and truce

While the recent political crisis in Karnataka, that threatened to tear apart the first BJP government in the south, was being played out, senior Karnataka BJP leader and current Speaker in the Legislative Assembly Jagadish Shettar is said to have quipped in private, ?What I did not get when I wanted it is now seeking me out?.

It is no secret that Shettar, considered at one time to be a chief ministerial candidate if the BJP ever came to power in Karnataka, has been smarting at not finding even a ministerial berth in the first full-fledged BJP government in the state.

Checkmated by his long-time rival in the party, BS Yeddyurappa, and shunted to play the role of Speaker against the grain of his personal ambitions, it is also no secret that the 53-year-old, amiable leader has been biding his time.

When the opportunity knocked around October 28 this year in the form of a rebellion within the BJP government against Yeddyurappa, and the rebel Reddy group landed at his doorstep begging him to be their leader, Shettar clearly did not say no.

With his long-nursed ambition, his origins in a town considered the heartland of the RSS and the BJP in Karnataka, his lineage from founding fathers of the Jan Sangh, his caste by birth ? he is a Lingayat like Yeddyurappa but from a sub sect considered stronger across north Karnataka ? and the fire of his dissent, Shettar was considered ripe for the picking by the rebels.

A long-term association with his fellow Hubli townsman and senior BJP leader Ananth Kumar also seemed to hold Shettar in good stead to be the replacement chief minister.

Shettar manoeuvred silently in the shadows cast by the rebellion and did not utter a word in public about his role in it, but managed to be always central to it.

Referred to popularly as Ajaatshatru in north Karnataka, the Lingayat heartland, where he was until Yeddyurappa?s ascendance to the chief minister?s post the foremost BJP leader, Shettar has strong founding roots in the Sangh Parivar.

His uncle Sadashiv Shettar was the first Jan Sangh member of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly, elected from Hubli in 1967, and his father SS Shettar was the first Jan Sangh mayor of Hubli.

Sources say Shettar is now not inclined to immediately join the government but would rather wait for the heat from the dissidence to dissipate before being inducted alongside a few of his supporters.