Jaago Bangalore, jaago

Sons and heirs

For the last few weeks, the biggest buzz in Karnataka politics has been of Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa's son B Y Raghavendra contesting this Lok Sabha election. From the CM's home-district, Shimoga.

After intense speculation (by the media, of course) and outcry among the BJP's other aspirants, the CM-avaru was forced to say his son won't contest as that's not in keeping with party policy. That is, there's to be no dynastic polity, it seems.Raghavendra, who's been voted to the Shikaripura Town Municipal Council earlier, is, alas, out of the game as of now.

The JD(S) is another party where dynasties are honoured. While patriarch and MP Deve Gowda's two sons are in the Assembly now, his daughter-in-law Anitha too passed the test of the ballot in a recent by-election to join the Assembly. Party circles were soon talking about Gowda's eldest son - in the civil services - taking voluntary retirement to join the political services. And his grandson Nikhil Gowda, son of H D Kumaraswamy, too was spotted during mama's election campaigns.

But Gowda's Man-Friday-cum-spokesperson-cum-troubleshooter Y S V Dutta says this : No way. That Gowda will be the only one from the family to contest this time - well, maybe, just maybe, Kumaraswamy will too, but others won't, he says. Well, we'll know better in April, I guess.
The eternal chameleon

The erstwhile BJP (or was that SP?) MP from Shimoga, Sarekoppa Bangarappa, has been labelled the eternal chameleon for years now - He has resigned twice and changed three parties in this last MP-term since 2004. He has flitted from the Samyukta Socialist Party to the Congress to the BJP to the Congress again. He has founded three parties - the KCP, the KVP and the Karnataka branch of the SP.

But in recent times, this septuagenarian politico is one person who has won every battle, but lost the war.

Ahead of the last Lok Sabha elections, he had joined the BJP because pollsters had predicted an NDA sweep. He wanted to be in the ruling party, be in a position of power. With him, the BJP swept Karnataka, but didn't come to power. Bangarappa was in the opposition again.

Last week, perhaps to ensure his reputation as a party-hopper is not tarnished, he decided to quit the SP and join the Congress. The Congress is pinning much hope on him, but perhaps there's a lesson in his record for being relegated to the Opposition.

Three others

Other faces -- and fates -- that could change with this election would be Jaffer Sharief, Sangliana and Siddaramaiah.

Sangliana, after giving the BJP a surprise win in Bangalore North in 2004, voted against the party diktat in the crucial confidence vote over the Indo-US nuke deal. Since then, he's been out of the BJP.

Sharief, a prominent Muslim face for the Congress, has been described as the chameleon who never leaves the party. He's threatened to quit, sent in resignation letters, waited and watched before every crucial election.
As for Siddaramaiah, he's sitting pretty, they say. The Congress wants him to win them Kuruba community votes, but doesn't want him in any position of power. The BJP wants him and would be willing to give him anything (haven't they just doled out ministries and government posts to other quitters who've defected from other parties to join them in the last few months?)

The Congress has so far not given him any key post, but it may make him Opposition leader in the Assembly if it fields current Opposition leader Mallikarjuna Kharge for the Gulbarga Lok Sabha seat. The party has little choice -- other stalwarts like Dharam Singh and RV Deshpande have, after all, lost in the last election.

Saffron blues
All of you who sleep tonight, think of the BJP's sleepless brass-hats.

Since it came to power, every month has seen the party battling some crisis or the other - police firing on farmers, serial blasts in Bangalore, the Padmapriya runaway-suicide case, poaching of MLAs through what was code-named 'Operation Lotus,' the attacks against churches, rising saffron terror, attacks on women in pubs, the mining scam, the kidnap of a Kerala MLA's daughter, and more recently, the reopening of a four-year-old police case of Yeddyurappa's wife Mythra Devi's mysterious death... all these have tallied up to the saffrons' hall of infamy.

Ten controversies in ten months. Time and again, the government has been embarrassed. And all this will count in the General Elections.

But it's also true that the BJP came to power amid much expectations. Voters were done with being caught between the Congress and the JDS and wanted a change - but nine months hence, the BJP's yet to deliver. One senior journalist - the north Karnataka bureau chief of the Times of India, no less - compares Yeddyurappa with Obama. "Both came to mean change. Both were voted with a lot of expectations. But we're yet to see any miracle." One difference though - for Dr Yeddy, time's running out. A mid-term exam is fast approaching.

More power to the urban voter... If they turn up to vote, that is. In the Assembly elections last year, barely 44 per cent of the voters boasted that little black ink on their fingers. That was the lowest in five elections (that is, two decades!) We probably need more of those 'Jaago' party guys handing out cups of chai.
source:http://ibnlive.in.com/statediary/deepabalakrishnan/53/53189/vote-for-change.html