Old Mysuru has become the new battleground in Karnataka politics. The region, which has 59 seats spread across nine districts, looks set to witness a fierce, triangular contest between the Janata Dal (Secular), the Congress and the BJP.
The reason is that the Vokkaliga community, politically dominant and numerically strong, appears torn between its love for JD(S) patriarch and former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda and the fresh overtures of the Congress and the BJP. The Congress has taken the gamble of elevating Vokkaliga leader D.K. Shivakumar as state party chief, while the BJP is mixing its development mantra with invocations of “Vokkaliga pride”.
Having reached saturation point in the rest of the state, the BJP is hoping to make inroads into Old Mysuru. Despite winning 104 seats and emerging as the single-largest party in 2018, the party was unable to form government. It had to ‘import’ 17 Congress and JD(S) legislators—several of them Vokkaligas—to finally come to power in 2019.
That the BJP has its eyes on Old Mysuru became clear on December 31, 2022, when Union Home Minister Amit Shah visited Mandya, a district in the region, to sound the party’s poll bugle. “A vote for the JD(S) is a vote for the Congress,” he told voters. “Vote for the Congress, and H.D. Kumaraswamy [of the JD(S)] will sit on the Congress’s lap. Give the BJP a chance to form government with full majority, and we will end corruption, dynastic politics and casteism in five years.”
The BJP is eyeing 54 of 59 seats in the region. Currently, the JD(S) holds 27 seats; the Congress and the BJP have 17 and 13, respectively. Two seats are with independents.
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