Can BJP win back K'taka by turning to BSY, Deve Gowda?

Six months after it lost the Karnataka election, the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) state unit has got a new president in B Y Vijayendra, the son of veteran BJP leader B S Yediyurappa.

- Nishant Ranjan, Roshan Kishore and Abhishek Jha

Vijayendra's appointment is widely being seen as an olive branch by the party high command to Yediyurappa, who was removed from the chief minister's post by the party in 2021.

Buying peace with Yediyurappa is the second major strategic retreat by the BJP in the state, the first being forging an alliance with the Janata Dal (Secular) or JD(S), the regional party of HD Deve Gowda. Can pivoting towards these two patriarchs of Karnataka politics win back Karnataka for the BJP? Here are three charts which try to answer this question.

BJP has suffered when it has sidelined BSY The numbers speak for themselves. The BJP's worst performance in Karnataka, after it captured power for the first time in 2008, came in the 2013 elections when it was reduced to a seat share and vote share of just 17.9% and 19.9%, respectively. The BJP fought the 2013 elections in the aftermath of Yediyurappa walking out of the party and forming a new party, the Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP). An HT analysis of the 2008 and 2013 election results suggests that the KJP was instrumental in the BJP's rout in the state (see chart 1).

The BJP leadership was prudent enough to realize what had happened and re-inducted Yediyurappa in the party before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.