BJP's Southern Fort Besieged From Within

Karnataka BJP's state leadership and caste representation are being challenged from within. Why is the party's high command allowing the factionalism to play out?

- SUGATA SRINIVASARAJU

In the last two decades, the Karnataka unit of the BJP has consistently delivered seats and vote share in both assembly and parliamentary polls. After the assembly polls of 2008, when they nearly equaled the Congress vote share in the state, they have never really slipped.

The state unit's Lok Sabha performance in 2024, with 17 seats out of 28, had ensured that Narendra Modi's position in New Delhi was not in peril. Its delivery of 25 seats in 2019 was extraordinary. What was till recently perceived to be a rather robust unit—one of its kind in southern India—has suddenly sunk into a crisis.

The state BJP's caste base, public confidence and leadership quality has seen enormous flux in recent months. But it remains a mystery why the BJP high command has allowed this drift that is being spoken about loudly. One is not sure if they are allowing a short-term combustion in the party unit to introduce long-term changes. Or, is it disinterest in a unit that has behaved more or less autonomously, and has been wrapped in complexity for its northern Indian handlers?

Some would argue that the decline in the local unit started in 2021 after B.S. Yediyurappa stepped down as chief minister, and Basavaraj Bommai was allowed a certain administrative wilfulness. Others would insist that the dissonance began after Yediyurappa's son, B.Y. Vijayendra, took over as state president, which gathered momentum after the Lok Sabha elections. The dissidents, it is said, had held their fire until Modi was ensconced in Delhi. That was their clever way of signaling that their anger was against the local leadership, not against the central leadership or the party at large.