Bengaluru: The crushing defeat suffered by the Janata Dal (Secular) or JD(S) in the assembly bypoll to Channapatna—a party stronghold—in Karnataka has fuelled dissent within the ranks of the regional party.
Senior party leaders, like G.T. Devegowda, have questioned the need for JD(S) state president and Union Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy to field his son Nikhil without consulting the party and the “unilateral” decision making process followed by the current leadership as this is Nikhil’s third electoral loss.
“He (Kumaraswamy) was the MLA from this constituency, became CM, but still could not manage Nikhil’s victory. Then why should he have fielded Nikhil? He (Kumaraswamy) is already a Union Minister with the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) government. He should have given the ticket to Yogeeshwara,” G.T. Devegowda, chairman of the party’s core committee, told Public TV.
Congress’s C.P. Yogeeshwara, who won the bypoll by a margin of 25,413 votes, was with the BJP before the announcement of the byelection. BJP decided to give Channapatna to ally JD(S) as part of their agreement. Though Yogeeshwara was offered the opportunity to contest on a JD(S) ticket, the 57-year-old refused and joined the Congress.
“I had told Kumaraswamy that he can either give the ticket to Nikhil or Yogeeshwara. But he should keep Yogeeshwara with him,” G.T. Devegowda said.
Kumaraswamy has, however, refrained from commenting on the loss or the arguments made by the dissenting leaders.
The party, led by former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda, has been encountering multiple problems since last year—the truncated seat tally in the 2023 assembly elections (from 37 in 2018 to 19 in 2023), having to cede its strongholds to ally BJP, the scandal involving the Revannas, and now the loss in the Vokkaliga heartland.
Kumaraswamy, leaders and party workers say, has taken over the complete decision making process of the party and that JD(S) joining the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has added to its challenges.
Though Kumaraswamy was handed a plum portfolio in the Union Cabinet, despite the JD(S) winning just two seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the alliance with the BJP was justified as a move to “save the party” from the onslaught of the Congress in Karnataka.
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‘Communication gap’
The fiasco involving former MP from Hassan, Prajwal Revanna, his father H.D. Revanna, mother Bhavani and brother Suraj, hit the party, while the Lok Sabha elections were underway. Prajwal has been accused of multiple counts of sexual assault, abduction and criminal intimidation, and has been in custody since 31 May. The other three are out on bail, but are also facing several serious allegations.
The crisis in the Revanna household gave Kumaraswamy, H.D. Revanna’s brother, complete control over the party, putting an end to a long drawn battle for dominance within the Deve Gowda family.
Despite this, the alliance with BJP was seen as a move to save the party and regain lost ground. But the implications of the word “secular” in the party’s name were questioned.
“As a party, we are secular and used to get support from all sections of society. When we went towards a pro-Hindu party, we lost some sections of votes and gained some others. The question before us now is how to win people back,” said a JD(S) MLA, requesting anonymity.
Though there is no demand yet for leadership change, a section of the party leaders have slammed the decision making process and the need to promote family members over workers.
Party MLAs and political experts have said that Kumaraswamy has not been able to focus on rebuilding the party since being appointed as the minister for heavy industries in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet.
“It’s not because he has become negligent. But there is a communication gap,” the MLA quoted above said.
However, legislators add that JD(S) cannot think of anyone other than Kumaraswamy and H.D. Deve Gowda that could be the face of the party as most of the others are at best “constituency-level leaders”. A section of leaders within the JD(S), including G.T. Devegowda, A. Manju, Harish Gowda and others, do not rely on the party, but on their own sway that allows them the leeway to easily jump ship, analysts say.
Most regional parties, including the M.K. Stalin-led Dravida Munnetra Kazahgam (DMK), Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), K. Chandrashekar Rao’s Bharatiya Rashtriya Samithi (BRS) and N. Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP), among others, are all “family-led parties” that rely on the “Patriarch”. In JD(S)’s case, it is H.D. Deve Gowda.
The decision to ally with the BJP, however, was taken by Kumaraswamy alone, according to some leaders, who were previously with the JD(S).
C.M. Ibrahim, the former JD(S) state president, Monday told reporters that Deve Gowda is old and is forced to listen to whatever Kumaraswamy says. “JD(S) has lost its soul. There are just leaders like Kumaraswamy, Revanna…and the other legislators have already started exploring their options.”
He added that the current sagging fortunes of the JD(S) are due to Kumaraswamy’s “greed” for power and money.
Yogeeshwara, the newly elected Congress MLA, also sparked a controversy, saying that he could get more than half the MLAs of JD(S) to defect within a month.
‘Eroding supporter base’
According to political analysts, JD(S)’s troubles began long before the loss in Channapatna. “The party has been experiencing erosion for a long time. They wanted to arrest it by aligning with the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections, but the loss in Channapatna has cast doubts over this,” A. Narayana, political analyst and faculty member at the Azim Premji University, told ThePrint.
JD(S) relies heavily on the Vokkaligas, a landowning agrarian community, found in large numbers across the southern districts of Karnataka. In the state’s caste-driven political landscape, Vokkaligas are seen to back the JD(S), Lingayats back the BJP, while the Congress banks on religious minorities, other backward classes and Dalits.
In the bypolls, the dominant Vokkaliga community wavered, experts pointed out. “Vokkaligas have been volatile in their voting and have shifted loyalties between the JD(S) and Congress in the Old Mysuru region. There are no two consecutive elections where the Vokkaligas have voted for the same party. Whenever JD(S) won, it won undoubtedly because of Vokkaliga support, and whenever it lost, it is because the community deserted them in favour of the Congress,” Narayana said.
The loss in Channapatna has also given Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister and Congress leader D.K. Shivakumar the opportunity to lay claim as the “next big Vokkaliga leader” after H.D. Deve Gowda, threatening JD(S).
Narayana added that excessive dependence on Vokkaligas and retaining the family-centric structure without a broad social base can hurt the party’s future prospects.
Though the BJP in Karnataka also faces similar problems, analysts say that its core support base is unlikely to shift to the JD(S). But the same is not true for JD(S), whose supporters backed BJP in the parliamentary elections. The fear of losing its supporters to its ally BJP had exposed the faultlines in the alliance as Kumaraswamy was reluctant to support the BJP-led padayatra (foot march) from Bengaluru to Mysuru over Siddaramaiah’s MUDA scam.
According to Narayana, JD(S) has to ‘reinvent itself’ with a centrist ideology and present itself as a third force in order to survive. But its alliance with the BJP has already dented this prospect, he said.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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