Can BSY still woo Lingayat votes? BJP believes so

Shyam Sundar Vattam | NT

Bengaluru: The BJP central leadership is relying heavily on former CM B.S.Yediyurappa to woo Lingayat and Veerashaiva votes for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the coming Assembly polls but the big question is whether this will still happen.

Delhi leaders are still banking on the so-called charisma of Yediyurappa to come back to power in Karnataka and he is being accorded a red carpet welcome at any function attended by either Prime Minister Narendra Modi or Union Home Minister Amit Shah. A few months ago, when the PM arrived in Bengaluru to attend a function, he spoke with Yediyurappa for a long time.

Last month, Shah, during his whirlwind visit to Bengaluru, had a secret meeting with the former CM at a hotel for almost two hours. Two days ago, Shah waited for a few minutes for the arrival of Yediyurappa on the dais. This shows the complete dependence of the BJP leaders on this veteran leader.

But the MLA from Shikaripura has crossed 80 and his energy levels have declined due to the age factor. But Yediyurappa still has plans to go on a whirlwind tour of all 224 Assembly constituencies ahead of the Assembly polls to ensure that the party comes back to power. The question here is whether Yediyurappa still has absolute control over Lingayat/Veerashaiva voters.

Will the new generation of community youth accept him as their leader because of the emergence of alternative leaders like Basangouda Patil Yatnal, Murgesh Nirani, and Jagadish Shettar? The one advantage that Yediyurappa has is that he is known through the length and breadth of the state whereas this is not the case of either Yatnal, Nirani or Shettar.

The BJP is realising to its chagrin that it has not encouraged the development of a second-line leadership in the Veerashaiva/Lingayat community to replace Yediyurappa. The people have seen how the party panicked in 2012-13 when Yediyurappa quit the BJP to float a new regional party, KJP.

At that time, no pan-Karnataka leader was available in the BJP to seek votes and the party paid a heavy price getting reduced to 40 odd seats. Presently, the BJP lacks a leader who is accepted by all sub-sects among Lingayats/Veerashaivas which is why it has fallen back on Yediyurappa.