Then it was ‘Ballari Chalo’, now it’s ‘Kodagu Chalo’

NT Correspondent

The ruling BJP may have heaved a sigh of relief when the Congress called off its proposed ‘Kodagu Chalo’ after the district administration imposed prohibitory orders across Kodagu fearing threat to the law and order situation.

 Fearing an adverse impact of ‘Kodagu Chalo’ on the coming polls to the Assembly, on the lines of ‘Ballari Chalo’, the BJP had planned to hold ‘Jana Jagruthi Samavesha’ (people awareness convention) to counter the Kodagu march led by Siddaramaiah. The saffron party subsequently dropped the proposed plan of holding the convention, scheduled to be held on August 26.

 When Siddaramaiah called for the ‘Kodagu Chalo’, BJP leadership both in Bengaluru and Delhi got the message that history in Karnataka politics was about to repeat. They had not anticipated that it would return to haunt them so soon. Knowing fully well the intransigence character of Congress leader Siddaramaiah, the BJP had invited unwanted trouble through the infamous egg attack episode. This forced the Congress to reply to the BJP in its own coin by deciding to launch the ‘Kodagu Chalo’ march on August 26. The plan was to bring all party functionaries to the Kodagu region, to support the former Chief Minister and Leader of Opposition in Legisla[1]tive Assembly Siddaramaiah.

 Siddaramaiah was personally targeted by BJP’s activists in Kodagu, a saffron hotbed like Dakshina Kannada, Uttara Kannada and Shivamogga. Though the party tried to project the egg attack as a show of anger by a disgruntled Congress worker, it failed miserably because of a series of lies it had to tell, so as to testify the claim. Congress succeeded in proving that the “disgruntled” element concerned was in fact a member of the Sangh Parivar and a hardcore BJP worker.

The reason to describe ‘Kodagu Chalo’ as a repetition of the political history of Karnataka is the landmark march of Congress to Ballari – the mining capital of Karnataka in August 2010. Back then, Congress took up the 320-km padayatra in a show of strength, targeting the ruling BJP over illegal mining and corruption.

The Congress had launched the padayatra in Bengaluru on July 25 under the banner ‘Ballari Chalo’ after accepting the challenge thrown by K Janardhana Reddy and Karunakara Reddy and their close associate and minister R Sreeramulu in the Karnataka Assembly daring Siddaramaiah and Congress to step into their home district.

Top leaders of Congress, including Gulam Nabi Azad, who then was in charge of Karnataka affairs, after storming the mining bastion Ballari declared that the countdown of the fall of the first-ever BJP government in the south had begun. It unleashed a barrage of attacks on ministers and the Reddy brothers – mining magnates, who hail from Ballari – accusing them of looting the State’s natural resources.

The mining barons, Reddy brothers, openly challenged Siddaramaiah to enter Ballari. Siddaramaiah was in his sixties then. He walked the long distance in scorching heat. This time it was the turn of the BJP leaders of Kodagu and Mysuru region, including Mysuru MP Pratap Simha, Appachchu Ranjan and Bopaiah to face the heat.

Then the issue was iron ore, now it has become the egg. The Siddaramaiah-led padayatra in a way wrote the preamble for the downfall of the BJP government, which saw three chief ministers in a span of five years. Siddaramaiah succeeded in dismantling the strong mining fortress structured by the Reddy brothers. Janardhana Reddy went to prison and Yediyurappa lost power.

This time around, the issue was the egg attack. Siddaramaiah took the egg attack on him as the opportunity to bring Congress back to power in the State with himself as the chief minister. Top leaders and legislators, who support Siddaramaiah are of the opinion that the “egg protest offers the muchneeded protein for the Congress as well as Siddaramaiah”.

Immediately after media reported the incident, the Congress transformed the egg into a symbol of protest with party workers across the state hitting the streets to protest against eggs being flung at the car in which their leader was travelling to Kodagu to get a first-hand picture of damage caused by the recent downpour and landslides in the region.

 Some senior leaders are viewing the egg attack episode, row over meat and the alleged apology tendered by Siddaramaiah for his attempt to divide the Lingayat community (though Siddaramaiah later denied making any such statement in Rambhapuri Peetha of Balehonnuru in Chikkamagaluru district) as a strategy of the BJP to divert attention of the Congress from real issues such as 40 per cent corruption in the state machinery to get work sanctioned.

Describing the recent allega