Siddaramaiah exposes JD(S)

Muralidhara Khajane
Bengaluru

On Friday, Karnataka elected four representatives to the upper house of the Parliament. The election of Bharatiya Janata Party’s Nirmala Sitharaman and Jaggesh and Congress’s Jairam Ramesh was a foregone conclusion since both the parties had enough MLAs on their side. But the fourth seat saw an intense fight among BJP, Janata Dal (S) and Congress. Eventually, BJP candidate Lahar Singh Siroya won the seat, defeating Congress’s Mansoor Ali Khan and JD (S)’s Kupendra Reddy.

Many blamed Siddaramaiah for BJP’s win. According to them, ‘Sidharamaiah’s firm stand had prevented an alliance with JD (S) and it resulted in Siroya’s win’. In fact, the outcome was a huge victory for Siddaramaiah and the Congress. He not only exposed the ‘opportunist politics’ being practised by JD (S) since 1999 but also sent a strong signal to the Congress high command that he is the unquestionable leader of Karnataka Congress. He even thwarted the JD (S) attempts to sideline him. By fielding Khan, the Congress had put the ball in JD (S) court and asked it to prove its secular credentials. Nevertheless, JD (S) had failed and lost an opportunity to play a major role in consolidating secular forces at the national level.

Siddaramaiah, in fact, turned the battle for the fourth seat into a litmus test for the secular credentials of JD (S), which tried to reach out to Congress high command through senior leaders, such as Mallikarjun Kharge, but both Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar did not budge even an inch. For Siddaramaiah, it was an opportunity to expose the opportunistic politics of JD (S), especially that of former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy.

Siddaramaih repeatedly referred to JD (S) as the ‘B-Team of BJP’ and kept on questioning the stand taken by Kumaraswamy on various decisions of the BJP government, especially the controversial Karnataka Land Reforms Act. It is unfortunate that Siddaramaiah is being portrayed as an ‘anti-hero’ for the defeat of the Congress candidate. Only time would tell whether his stand and strategy were in the interest of the country and the party.