Did Yediyurappa give in to high command diktat?

Sachchidananda Gautam
Bengaluru

Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader B S Yediyurappa’s decision to distance himself from electoral politics and vacate his Shikaripura seat for his son B Y Vijayendra has triggered a debate on whether the party will firmly standby its anti-dynastic policy or will it opt for pragmatic approach of promoting dynasts within the party.

A day after his announcement, on Saturday, Yediyurappa took a U-turn and left the final decision to the party high command, citing pressure from supporters. This has also raised doubts about the leader’s waning neversay- die attitude. The Yediyurappa-Vijayendra episode points to two things. Firstly, BJP is selective in its ‘Parivarvad’ (dynastic politics) policy and secondly, the party has adopted the high command culture in a more brazen manner.

In BJP, the high command means the triumvirate of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and party’s national president J P Nadda in that order. It appears the triumvirate no longer feels apologetic about compromising with the party’s idealistic anti-dynastic stand.

Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself revised his long-held opinion on dynasties during his talk on Constitution Day. His new stand is that: ‘Dynastic parties are bad, but dynasts are okay’. In fact, BJP is not an exception to dynastic politics. According to reports, 11 percent of the BJP MPs (45) in the country have dynastic backgrounds.

Former Karnataka chief minister H D Kumaraswamy, who is countering BJP’s attempts to label regional parties as just ‘family enterprises’, recently released a list that shows BJP is not an exception to the family enterprise. His BJP ‘dynasty’ list has the following names: Yediyurappa and sons, Ravi Subrahmanya- Tejasvi Surya, R Ashok- Ravi, Somanna-Arun Somanna, Arvind Limbavali- Raghu, Vishwanath-Vani Vishwanath, Jagadish Shettar- Pradeep Shettar, Murugesh Nirani-Hanumanth Nirani, G S Basavaraju- Jyothi Ganesh, Appacchu Ranjan-Suja Kushalappa, Shashikala Jolle-Anna Saheb Jolle, Umesh Jadhav- Avinash Jadhav, Arvind Bellad-Chandrakanth Bellad, D H Shankaramurthy-D S Arun, V Srinivasa Prasad- Harshavardhan, Jarkiholi, Umesh Katti and Udasi families.

Chief Minister of Karnataka, Basavaraj Bommai too should have been part of this long list. For, his father S R Bommai was the chief minister of Karnataka. It appears the party’s favourite narrative of opposing dynastic politics will hurt BJP by forcing the cadre to question the ‘pragmatic approach’ of promoting dynasts within the party.

Considering the political structure of Karnataka BJP, it will be difficult to adopt a ‘one family, one ticket’ policy and if it adheres to it, there are few chances of getting the simple majority to form the government. It is not just BJP’s trouble. Congress and Janata Dal (Secular) in Karnataka also face a similar predicament. Yediyurappa has even decided to abide by the party diktat. His statement that “I can only give suggestions and abide by the party high command’s decision” is being viewed as the four-time CM’s sense of insecurity and his reluctance to antagonise the high command.

The BJP high command’s decision to field candidates in the recently-concluded polls to the Rajya Sabha and Legislative Council clearly proves that the ‘high command’ culture is in no way inferior to that of Congress. The state leadership was not interested in re-nominating Union Minister Nirmala Seetharaman for the Rajya Sabha polls because she hardly served the interests of the state in her previous term. But the high command ignored the state unit and directed the leaders to accommodate Seetharaman. Similar was the choice of actor Jaggesh. Party’s selection surprised even senior leaders.