TRUST DEFICIT
26 OUTLOOK 5 August 2019
by Ajay Sukumaran in BangaloreC
OALITION experiments hav-
en’t worked in Karnataka. That
much has remained constant in
a state reeling from political
flux over the past months, if not
years. When the BJP defeated H.D.
Kumaraswamy’s JD(S)-Congress coa-
lition government at Tuesday’s trust
vote, it was the third time in 13 years
that a ruling alliance had lost the
number game. Now, with former
chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa back
in the driver’s seat, the BJP gets a sec-
ond shot at ruling Karnataka.
The denouement itself was laced with
irony—it was Kumaraswamy who
brought down the Congress-JD(S) coa-
lition, headed by Dharam Singh, in
2006 when he led a faction of his party
to a pact with Yeddyurappa. Twenty
months later, when Kumaraswamy re-
neged on that pact to transfer power to
the BJP, the second coalition fell. This
time around, it was a group of rebels
that pulled his 14-month-old govern-
ment down.
The confidence motion got stretched to
four days because the allies hung on to the
hope that they could win back some of the
16 rebels. In the final headcount, 20 legis-
lators, including a Bahujan Samaj Party
MLA, had stayed away from the vote,
giving the BJP, with 105 members, a ma-
jority in the truncated assembly.
Through the four days of debate, a
confident BJP sat quietly in the opposi-
tion benches as the JD(S)-Congress
fumed over the defectors—they spoke
at length about the crores of rupees that
were allegedly offered to the rebels who
had resigned, and their trips by special
flight to Mumbai where they stayed put.
“The business of the House is to discuss
business,” wryly noted Speaker K.R.
Ramesh Kumar at one point, insisting
that every allegation went into the rec-
ord. “People should know, let every-
thing come out,” he said.
What becomes of the rebels now?
There’s a legal aspect, given that they
had approached the Supreme Court
over their resignations earlier this
month. This had triggered discussion in
the assembly about party whips and the
anti-defection law arising from the
court’s interim order that the legisla-
tors ought not be compelled to partici-
pate in the House proceedings. TheCongress and JD(S) have disowned
these legislators and pressed for dis-
qualification. “Those who have fallen
for Operation Kamala (lotus, the BJP
symbol) will never be inducted back.
Even if the sky falls,” said Congress
leader Siddaramaiah. Bypolls will likely
follow, reckon political analysts.
The natural question now is whether
the JD(S)-Congress alliance, which was
stitched together in 2018, will continue.
Kumaraswamy told reporters that the
two parties were yet to discuss that and
his priority now is to strengthen the
JD(S). Congress state president Dinesh
Gundu Rao says: “It’s time to build the
party again in the state. We are number
one in terms of (assembly) vote share.
The Opposition got an important role and
that’s the role we would want to play now.”
More significantly, the focus shifts to
the BJP’s own challenges as a ruling
party. “Whether it is going to be a stable
arrangement is a bit difficult to guess,”
political analyst A. Narayana says. If the
numbers are again precariously bal-
anced after bypolls, the political insta-
bility is going to continue, he says. The
bigger challenge will come from within.
The BJP’s first term in office (2008-
2013) was wracked by infighting—three
chief ministers in five years. If the BJP
has to rely on new entrants for strength,
it is bound to queer the pitch. Again, a
decade ago, the BJP banked on defec-
tors to shore up its wafer-thin majority,
resulting in a faction-ridden outfit.
“When you have many new entrants
from other parties, it’s as good as run-
ning a coalition. It also depends on what
kind of heartburn it is going to create
within the BJP,” says Narayana. Of
course, the party scenario has changed
since those years, especially with a BJP
central leadership firmly in command.
“The BJP never triggered anything.
The MLAs who were staying in Mumbai
had made their stand that it was of their
own volition,” senior BJP leader S.
Suresh Kumar tells Outlook. “From Day
One, there was distrust (in the coali-
tion) and no attempt was made to cor-
rect the trust deficit,” he says. The
fractured 2018 verdict made things dif-
ficult for any political party but the BJP,
he says, is upto the challenge of running
the government. “Today, we should
learn from those mistakes and we
should see that this is a more cohesive
unit, and determined,” he says. OHeads
They
Win
BJP wins Karnataka as
rebel tail stings JD(S),
Congress combinePhotographs: PTIHEADS DOWN, CHIN UP
Kumaraswamy walks out;
Yeddyurappa and team are all smiles