BJP REVAMPS TEAM K

For six months after its drubbing in the May 2023 assembly polls, the BJP party unit in Karnataka remained in a sort of limbo.

- Ajay Sukumaran

As the main Opposition party, its leaders were vocal in their criticism of the ruling Congress, but two nagging issues remained to be resolved: the party hadn't yet named its Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the assembly, nor had it chosen a successor to state party president Nalin Kumar Kateel, whose one-year extension of term in August 2022 trailed off into a hazy lame-duck status with the electoral defeat. In fact, the assembly session in July had witnessed the rare scene of the LoP's designated seat lying vacant during the debates.

That changed suddenly in mid-November, with the party pulling out a surprise, that too in the midst of high-stakes elections elsewhere-it chose B.Y. Vijayendra, first-time MLA and son of party veteran and former CM B.S. Yediyurappa, as state president. As a senior partyman says, "Nobody anticipated it." Indeed, while Vijayendra had been in the running, the names of several seniors, too, were in circulation as probables, including that of Union minister of state for agriculture Shobha Karandlaje. However, in choosing the 48-year-old Vijayendra as party chief, the party has signalled that it is looking to recoup its voter base ahead of the Lok Sabha election.