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Congress gets active as ruling BJP crisis
continues
Saturday May 19, 2012 07:58:48 PM,
V.S. Karnic,
IANS
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Bangalore: Sensing the
possibility of regaining power in Karnataka after nearly eight
years, the Congress is actively preparing itself for the assembly
polls due early next year even as the ruling Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) hurtles from one crisis to the other.
A little over a month after Congress president Sonia Gandhi came
to the state to woo the politically influential Lingayat
community, whose support to the BJP brought it to power, her son
and party general secretary Rahul Gandhi will be here June 1 on a
two-day visit.
The BJP camp is also looking forward to high-profile visits but
only to douse the raging fire in the state unit where its scam-hit
former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa is making frantic efforts
to unseat his successor D.V. Sadananda Gowda.
BJP general secretary in charge of Karnataka affairs Dharmendra
Pradhan was in Bangalore late Friday and Saturday for a patch-up
bid. Leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha and senior BJP leader
Arun Jaitley who was also to arrive for the truce-attempt has
cancelled his visit.
While the immediate threat to the survival of Gowda, who took over
from Yeddyurappa last August, has been averted, the government
remains shaky and there is a distinct possibility of early
elections to the 225-member assembly.
In contrast, Rahul Gandhi will be trying to pep up state Congress
leaders to go all out to regain the power the party lost in 2004
-- though it headed a coalition with Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) for
about 20 months in 2004-2006.
This will be Rahul Gandhi's first visit to the state in almost two
years. He will address the Youth Congress national executive at
Hubli, about 400 km north of Bangalore, June 1.
This is the first time the executive meeting is being held in
Karnataka.
The next day, he will proceed to the central Karnataka town of
Davangere, about 200 km north of Bangalore, to talk to heads of
district Congress committees and the party's block presidents.
The visit of Sonia Gandhi and her son come in the wake of
expectation that the state may be headed for elections later this
year itself instead of early next year in view of the continuing
crisis in the ruling BJP.
It is not only the Congress and the JD-S, the two main opposition
parties in the state, which are demanding immediate resignation of
the BJP government and elections.
A section in the BJP too sees early elections as the best way to
get over the simmering crisis in the party triggered by
Yeddyurappa and his loyalists' bid to oust Gowda.
The Gowda ministry is surviving not because of the BJP national
leadership's deft crisis management but due to around a dozen
corruption and land deal cases pending against Yeddyurappa.
It has been given a fresh lease of life following the May 11
Supreme Court order for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)
probe into mining bribery charges and illegal land deals against
Yeddyurappa.
Realising his dream of becoming chief minister again has to wait
till the CBI probe is over, the former chief minister and his
supporters are now demanding Gowda be replaced by rural
development minister Jagadish Shettar.
Gowda's supporters are working to thwart the move by suggesting
Shettar be made the deputy chief minister.
Given the animosity among rival factions in the state unit, the
BJP national leadership can at best achieve fragile truce with
early elections emerging as the best way out to end the mess in
the state.
(V.S. Karnic can be contacted at vs.karnic@ians.in)
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