In position, but not ready: Karnataka's political turmoil ahead of LS Polls

Karnataka is potentially the only southern state where a fierce contest is anticipated between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), currently allied with the Janata Dal (Secular) or JD(S), and the Congress in the Lok Sabha election.

The Congress, having swept the May 2023 Assembly polls and currently governing Karnataka, is pitted against the BJP, which is out of power but aspires to stage a comeback in the 2024 battle, emulating its success in 2019. The BJP fell short of a majority in the 2018 Assembly election but rebounded a year later in the parliamentary polls.

However, the Congress, which believes its poll victory will translate into a significant number of Lok Sabha seats, unlike five years ago, is faced with a new challenge. The latest issue before Chief Minister Siddharamaiah is the controversy over the alleged reluctance of Bengaluru’s commercial establishments to comply with an order issued by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) on December 24 which stated that their trade licences would be revoked if they failed to display Kannada on 60 per cent of the space allocated to their signage by February 2024.

The issue, rooted in the pursuit of a unique Kannada identity, embodied in language and culture, clashed with urban Karnataka’s cosmopolitan nature and the government’s efforts to promote Bengaluru as a premier investment destination. This issue has a storied history.

In December 2008, the BJP’s B S Yediyurappa, then chief minister, mandated that the name boards on shops and commercial properties should be in Kannada and displayed more prominently than those in other languages, as per Rule 24 A of the Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishments Act. The rule stipulated a penalty for non-compliance.

But in 2009, Vodafone Essar South petitioned the Karnataka High Court, seeking to have the rule declared unconstitutional. A single-judge Bench ruled in Vodafone’s favour. In 2014, when the state government appealed against the order, a division Bench of the high court rejected it. In 2018, the BBMP circumvented the legal obstacle by drafting the BBMP Outdoor Signage and Public Messaging bylaws, and in 2022, the BJP government enacted the Kannada Language Comprehensive Development Act, mandating that all name boards should primarily be in Kannada.

 The most recent incident, which occurred in December, saw pro-Kannada activists, led by the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike, vandalise shops that allegedly violated the BBMP rule. Siddharamaiah clamped down on the protestors and made several arrests, but the Vedike office-bearers threatened to intensify their protest if the detainees were not released immediately.

Siddharamaiah was forced to balance his action against vandalism with a stiff warning to commercial establishments (including industries, hospitals, and hotels) to implement the BBMP's rule.

Meanwhile, the BJP threw its weight behind the Vedike with Union minister and Dharwad MP Pralhad Joshi asking: "What is the harm in writing in Kannada, as well as in English or any other language... This is not England."  As trade associations and business bodies like the Federation of Karnataka Chambers of Commerce and Industry supported the pro-Kannada outfit, vocal corporate voices -- such as Kiran Mazumdar Shaw -- decried the protests, underlining the fact that there was no easy way out for the Congress.

The Congress’ predicament was compounded by other factors, such as its internal differences over the release of a caste census report it had commissioned when in power in 2015, the reduced allocation of funding for development works because the projected cost of fulfilling its pre-poll guarantees ran upward of Rs 54,000 crore, and Deputy CM D K Shivakumar’s proposal to revisit the infra contracts that are underway in Bengaluru since the BJP regime before releasing Rs 710 crore for clearing the pending bills of contractors. The BJP and the JD(S) claimed this was a ploy by the government to amass its share of kickbacks from contractors, who had turned against the BJP for allegedly demanding a 40 per cent cut before sanctioning an agreement. The Congress played up the charge in its poll campaign.

 But is the BJP in a position to take advantage of the cracks visible in the Congress establishment? The incipient revolt against two recent appointments by a section of leaders indicated that the BJP may have to get its act together before challenging the Congress.

 Prominent party leaders, including MLAs Basangouda Patil Yatnal and Arvind Bellad, as well as former ministers C T Ravi and Arvind Limbavali, criticised the appointments of B Y Vijayendra as Karnataka BJP president and R Ashoka as the leader of the Opposition in the state legislature. Vijayendra, a first-time MLA from Shikaripura, is Yediyurappa’s son; Ashoka is deemed a “loyalist” of the veteran leader.

 Yatnal reminded the BJP that Yediyurappa had been “disloyal” to the party when he formed his Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP) after quitting in 2012. In the 2013 elections to the 224-member Assembly, the KJP won just six seats but damaged the BJP so severely that its tally fell from 110 to 40 seats and ensured the Congress’ triumph. Yatnal called the Vijayendra-helmed state unit as KJP-2 and said: “The KJP-1 was Yediyurappa's party and the KJP-2 is Vijayendra's; the grandson’s party will be the KJP-3.” But the attack did not deter Yediyurappa who ensured that his son packed the organisation with his nominees.

 BJP sources admitted that they could not “ignore” Yediyurappa’s stranglehold over the dominant Lingayats while their calculation was they would split the votes of the Vokkaliga, the other influential community, through the JD(S).

 Above all, the BJP is almost sure that PM Narendra Modi's overwhelming presence in the Lok Sabha polls shall see a 2019 repeat when the party won 25 of the 28 seats.