2023: Veteran BJP leaders bat for collective leadership

Shyam Sundar Vattam NT

Bengaluru: Will Karnataka BJP go to the 2023 Assembly elections under a single or collective leadership? According to Union Home Minister Amit Shah it will be under the captaincy of Chief Minister Basavaraja Bommai but veteran BJP leaders beg to differ with many offering a completely divergent opinions to counter Shah’s declaration in Davangere that the party would face the 2023 Assembly polls with Bommai leading from the front.

Shah’s statement has not gone down well among the senior leaders who feel that going to battle under the leadership of a person who had only joined the saffron party in 2008 is not a good idea.

Already, former CM and an important Lingayat leader of North-Karnataka region, Jagadish Shettar had made it clear that as of now Shah might have said so but things could cjhange in the run up to the next Assembly polls. “We have to work under a collective leadership, if our party wants to come back to power in the State ‘’, he told News Trail.

A similar view had been expressed by another former CM and undisputed leader of lingayats, B.S.Yediyurappa. Without mincing words he had said that BJP would go the 2023 Assembly polls under the collective leadership (and not under any single individual). Going further, the veteran BJP leader said he would embark upon a statewide tour after the winter session of the State Legislature to help BJP win 140 seats of the total 224 seats in the next Assembly elections. The statements of these two Lingayat leaders had been welcomed whole-heartedly by other senior leaders who have spoken out against Shah’s diktat.

Bommai escaped the wrath of losing the Hangal by-poll by putting the blame on Delhi leaders for the wrong choice of candidate that resulted in defeat. But, he could be pulled up for the fiasco in Belagavi where the party candidate lost to an independent and to JD(S) in Mysuru due to internal bickering. BJP National General Secretary and Chikmagalur MLA C.T.Ravi has frankly admitted that Congress winning 11 seats on par with the BJP in Legislative Council election is a warning bell. “The high command must pull up its socks to set the House in order in Karnataka and bridge the differences between outsiders and insiders, “ an insider said.

The BJP’s original leaders are stepping up their complaints against the ministers - who basically are recent entrants from the Congress and JDS) - accusing them of not responding to their grievances. The CM Political Secretary and Honnalli MLA M.P.Renukacharya is said to have complained to Bommai that a majority of the ministers were turning a deaf ear to their appeal for help, and had in turn been warned by the same legislators that the high command must not forget that without these legislators, the party would not have come to power.

Insiders have told News Trail that the task before the incumbent CM is huge as if he wants a 120 lotus flowers to bloom, in the 2023 Assembly polls, he not only has to take the BJP leaders to stay on course, he also needs the 17 Congress and the JD(S) legislators to stay in the party.