CHANGING STRIPES

It seemed open season for turncoats as the nomination of candidates got under way three weeks before the election to the 224-seat legislative assembly in Karnataka.

- Ajay Sukumaran

The ruling BJP, in particular, wasn’t expecting some of its old warhorses—former chief minister Jagadish Shettar, among them—to change sides when it chose to prune the list of seniors seeking renomination. In what was a politically hectic weekend, political equations in the state saw a churn, with a caste angle to boot, ahead of the polls scheduled on May 10.

The BJP had been hinting at a shake-up of sorts for a while now. Like in Gujarat, it was hoping to bring in fresh faces to offset anti-incumbency in some seats while eyeing the opportunity to retire some seniors. So when it dropped 20 sitting MLAs, the party was expecting some amount of backlash. Some, like the 74-year-old veteran leader K.S. Eshwarappa, withdrew from the race when it was clear he would not get the ticket to the Shivamogga seat that he has been contesting since 1989. In the 19 assembly seats across the three coastal districts of Dakshina Kannada, Uttara Kannada and Udupi, all of which are BJP bastions, it managed to replace as many as six candidates without facing any significant hassle. What came as a complete shock was Shettar and Laxman Savadi, a member of the Legislative Council and a former deputy CM, quitting the party to join the Congress.