KARNATAKA THE CONGQUEST

THE INSIDE STORY OF HOW THE STATE WAS WON AND THE LESSONS THE GRAND OLD PARTY CAN LEARN FROM THIS SUCCESS

- RAJ CHENGAPPA with KAUSHIK DEKA and AJAY SUKUMARAN

Randeep Surjewala’s Art of Winning Elections seems to have taken a leaf out of Sun Tzu's playbook. The ancient Chinese general believed that "supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting". When the lanky Surjewala, 55, was made Congress general secretary incharge of Karnataka in September 2020, he knew it would be an uphill task to defeat the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The state assembly election was just two and a half years away. So, he employed a tactic he had used in Narwana in Haryana in 2005 when, as a young MLA, he defeated veteran chief minister Om Prakash Chautala in the state election. "You erode your opponent's credibility to such an extent," he says, "that when he finally goes to the polls, he has already conceded defeat. For that, you must chip and chip away at them till they finally collapse."

 

Along with state leaders D.K. Shivakumar, the bearded and energetic 61-year-old president of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC), and Siddaramaiah, the rustic but composed 75-year-old Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader who now gets a second stint as CM, Surjewala implemented an innovative strategy that involved playing on the front foot and keeping the opponent constantly on the defensive. It would defeat the mighty BJP in its southern bastion by a margin the Congress had not won since 1989 in the state. After the votes were counted, the Congress had won 135 of the state's 224 seats, 22 more than the 113 needed for a simple majority.