Despite rumbles, Congress govt seems irreplaceable in Karnataka

Hans India

28-05-2025

Karnataka may have been devastated by the torrential rains, sweeping across south-west India, heralding an early monsoon season this year. Bengaluru, already over stretched as far as its inadequate civic amenities and traffic problems are concerned, had a torrid time all through last week. Quite naturally, it was the hapless public who endured the terrible times and an endless stream of assurances from the government, which seemed convinced that they were actually doing their jobs much better than ever. Completing two years of its tenure, the Congress government last week decided to celebrate it on a grand note. With the Delhi bosses and the party spearhead Rahul Gandhi in attendance, the Siddaramaiah-led cabinet listed out its series of achievements, which were mostly about the five guarantees that they started implementing over this period. The sixth guarantee, handing of ownership rights to the people of the State was initiated by Rahul who said that 'whoever owns land in Karnataka must have ownership rights'. It surely does not mean that the remaining three years are going to be smooth sailing for the present government.
Dissidence and groupism, as old as the hills, continue to plague the administration as the restive Deputy Chief Minister, D K Shivakumar has moved enough to rename the neighbouring districts of Bengaluru as Bengaluru South, which includes his constituency. If this is being panned as 'land mafia' friendly by the BJP, which despite maintaining a high pressure and street-level activism against the doings of the government, is still far from being considered as a cohesive unit capable of taking on the ruling party.
The saffron party's machinery at the state level is forced to grapple with disgruntled old-timers and the defectors, who joined it after its 'Operation Kamala' a few years ago. With Siddaramaiah managing to hold on to the CM post despite regular attacks from within his party, the local BJP leaders have not yet been the beneficiaries of splits and break-away factions from the GOP, which had enabled them to form governments earlier. A survey result commemorating the two-year celebrations had a lot of positives for the BJP. The key findings were that if elections were held today, the Vijayendra-led party would bag close to 150+ seats with the
Congress likely to be getting a much lesser number. In fact, it would be a role reversal, only that the BJP would get at least 20 more seats than the existing government. The surprise, if one can term it thus, is that people seem to be overwhelmingly in favour of the incumbent Chief Minister. Siddaramaiah clearly out-beats every other likely contender, bagging a 29.2 per cent support. In comparison, Shivakumar is reportedly favoured by just 10.2 per cent of the respondents. Worse is the case of BJP state party chief B Y Vijayendra, who is preferred by just 5.2 per cent.
Riding on a heady combination of 'Ahinda', a Kannada acronym for minorities and backward castes, Siddaramaiah may have actually sent the message to everyone concerned that he is still the popular choice. One is not sure whether the favourable outcome of the survey is helping the BJP's cause or has it ended up showing the mirror to the Hindutva proponents, who have the momentum in their favour but lack a CM face to counter the Congress.