Kateel on way out? BJP looks for pan-K’taka face

Shyam Sundar Vattam | NT

As the ruling BJP gears up for the 2023 Assembly polls, now just a year and a half away, the big question on everyone’s mind is whether Nalinkumar Kateel who has completed one year in office as party state president, will continue in office or be replaced.

Kateel, a known face of the Hindutva movement in Coastal Karnataka, was anointed as BJP chief on August 20, 2020 replacing B.S.Yediyurappa who was then holding the post of both CM and state president. Sources say a discussion is on in the party to find a successor to him at least six months before the crucial Assembly elections. Reason: The Dakshina Kannada BJP MP is a  firebrand leader fit to lead the party in Coastal Karnataka but has courted controversy too often embarrassing the BJP. His recent comment dubbing the  Congress ‘yuvaraj’(Rahul Gandhi) a ‘drug addict and peddler’, had led to a huge row inviting the wrath of Congress leaders and many others.

What the BJP is looking for is a charismatic leader who has a pan-Karnataka appeal like Yediyurappa which the current BJP chief hardly is. 

Nor does he fit the caste equation-Kateel is a Brahmin  leading a party which relies heavily on the Lingayats as its vote bank.

The BJP top brass is still not sure if they should go in for a Lingayat leader or make a non-Lingayat party president with CM Basavaraj Bommai, a Lingayat, already occupying the top post. Bommai however belongs to Sadara, a very small sub-sect among Lingayats which has made the BJP look for someone who can also successfully lead the party to power in 2023.

Except for Yediyurappa, no other leader has a Pan-Karnataka appeal as most of them are confined to their own region. But the BJP high command is in no mood to make Yediyurappa  president considering his age and the unwritten rule that an executive post should not be given to leaders who have crossed 75.

Former CM Jagadish Shettar is one of the aspirants since he belongs to the more powerful Banajiga sub-sect in the Lingayat community, and had held the post a few years ago. Even Vijayapura City MLA Basangouda Patil Yatnal, a Panchamasali Lingayat  has thrown his hat in the ring but is not in the good books of BJP leaders because of his penchant for making loose remarks   and courting controversy. Former Deputy CM Laxman Savadi is yet another Lingayat aspirant who is keen on the post.

In case the high command ignores caste equations and prefers a Vokkaliga, the other dominant community, Revenue Minister R. Ashok is a frontrunner as he also aspires to become CM. And if the party wishes to make a SC leader party president in a move to attract Dalit votes, the mantle could fall on Mahadevapura MLA Arvind Limbavali or Water Resources Minister Govind Karjol. But they are not mass leaders and lack a pan-Karnataka image.

Among the Kuruba leaders, it is Rural Development & Panchayat Raj Minister K.S.Eshwarappa who tops the list but he does not have the charisma to woo voters of all communities.

“If it is true that the BJP high command is planning to remove Kateel, who will be the successor? Will it be a Lingayat or non-Lingayat? Which communities will the party bank on in the 2023 polls? These questions have to be answered before considering appointing a new state president”, a former CM told News Trail.