BENGALURU: After the change of guard in BJP, Congress is working on strategies to woo back Veerashaiva-Lingayats in north Karnataka. Insiders say one proposal under discussion in Delhi is whether a Lingayat should be made the new opposition leader in the assembly and Siddaramaiah should be requested to continue as the Congress Legislature Party leader.
Currently, Siddaramaiah holds both posts. Another proposal is to appoint a prominent Lingayat MLA as an AICC general secretary and position him as the face of north Karnataka.
“There will be another round of deliberations on these two aspects after Basavaraj Bommai forms his cabinet and selects deputy chief ministers,” said a senior Congress functionary, who is privy to the discussions in Delhi. MB Patil, a five-time MLA who represented the Babaleshwar constituency in Vijayapura district, is a frontrunner to be the leader of opposition and AICC general secretary. Patil was the water resources minister in Siddaramaiah’s cabinet. In 2017, he strongly supported the movement to seek a separate religious status for the Lingayat community, a move which didn’t yield Congress results in the 2018 assembly polls.
Congress insiders say giving a prominent position to a Lingayat may help the party win support among sections of the community that are upset with BJP’s decision to replace 78-year-old Lingayat strongman BS Yediyurappa as the chief minister. Yediyurappa has been the BJP face in Karnataka for more than two decades.
Some Congress MLAs close to Siddaramaiah allege that the DK Shivakumar camp suggested the plan for a new opposition leader to undercut Siddaramaiah’s influence. “We don’t think Siddaramaiah will agree to divest the opposition leader’s post, especially when he wants to become the chief minister again,” one legislator said.
Patil said that he was not aware of any planned changes. “I have no clue what the party leadership is thinking. I have no such information,” he said.
Senior Congress functionary and former council chairman BL Shankar said that the party should take advantage of the situation resulting from Yediyurappa’s exit as the CM. “BJP came to power because of Yediyurappa, who is its only mass leader. Though there are other Lingayat faces in BJP, nobody can match his calibre; Yediyurappa had a personal vote bank of 7 to 8 per cent across the state. Now, Congress has an opportunity and it should take advantage of it to regain its hold in north Karnataka,” he added.
Lingayats, one of the biggest voter groups in the state, once backed Congress before moving away.
