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Why Third Front in Karnataka is set to fail

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TS Sudhir
TS SudhirFeb 18, 2018 | 16:27

Why Third Front in Karnataka is set to fail

The idea of a Third Front, an anti-BJP, anti-Congress formation is being tested in the political laboratory of Karnataka. It is unlikely to lead to his rising-like-a-phoenix-from-the-ashes moment, pending since 1997, but HD Deve Gowda would hope he can damage the two national parties to the extent of forcing a hung Assembly in the state when it goes to polls in May.

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The JD(S) has entered into an alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) of Mayawati and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) of Sharad Pawar. Both parties have little or no presence in Karnataka, reducing this political arrangement to nothing more than an alphabet soup. The JD(S) vote share in Assembly elections since 2004 has hovered around the 20 per cent mark but most of those votes have come from the south Karnataka region.

The BSP contested 175 seats in the 2013 elections and all but one of them lost their deposits. The party got just 0.95 per cent votes. But it is not as if Gowda, the 24x7 politician, sees no role for Mayawati's party in the Karnataka theatre. Political analyst Sugata Raju points out that the JD(S) lost nine seats five years ago by a margin of 1,500 to 2,000 votes. A closer look at the voting numbers revealed the BSP candidates had polled closer to 2,000 votes in many of those constituencies.

The Congress would also look at the alliance with some concern, going by the Gujarat experience, where in eight seats, the BJP's winning margin was more or less the same as the number of votes polled by the BSP and NCP.

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"It is a theoretical calculation. Deve Gowda wants to neutralise the BSP factor," says Sugata Raju.

On paper, it is being projected as an alliance that will woo the Vokkaliga and Dalit votes. The intention is to pit it against AHINDA, an acronym for the vote bank of minorities, backward classes and Dalits, a brainchild of Siddaramaiah. The Gowda parivaar has a rather strange relationship with the Congress party and Siddaramaiah. Even as the JD(S) shares power with the Congress in the Bengaluru municipal corporation, the senior Gowda also goes public with his resentment against protege Siddaramaiah's rise, after he quit the party to join the Congress. This week, the former prime minister in a bitter frame of mind, called the chief minister "mean" and regretted having groomed him.

"I will ask for an apology from the people of Karnataka for grooming such an immoral politician," said Gowda.

In PCC chief G Parameshwara and Leader of the Congress party in the Lok Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, the Congress has two senior Dalit leaders and Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mewani too will add political heft to the campaign. The JD(S) that is short of star campaigners to woo the Dalit space, is banking on the Mayawati card. The plan is to plaster the state with posters of Gowda, Kumaraswamy and Mayawati to emphasise the new political combination in town. However, it is anyone's guess how much this Uttar Pradesh politician's appeal, just like Yogi Adityanath, will work in the southern state of Karnataka.

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The other hurdle will be an effective transfer of votes in the 20 seats that the BSP will contest. Will Vokkaligas, who are the base of the JD(S) vote for BSP's candidates, most of them Dalits and vice versa, given that the two communities are two ends of the caste spectrum. Dalits account for 18 per cent of the electorate in Karnataka, followed by the Lingayats and Vokkaligas, who dominate the political power space.

Like the BSP, the NCP too has been given seven seats to contest this election. Most of these constituencies may be in Belgaum district that has a significant Marathi-speaking population.

However, the feeling is that JD(S) that is starving for funds, is looking at the two moneybags to help it mount a serious challenge to the cash-rich BJP and the Congress. In the past, the leadership of the party has picked up candidates who can fund their own campaigns. Though the JD(S)-BSP-NCP alliance wears the mask of being an ideological tie-up and a serious effort to indulge in social engineering, in reality, it seems need-based, driven by political arithmetic.

A look at JD(S) over the years reveals that its best performance was in 2004 when it won 58 seats and significantly, Siddaramaiah was then part of Team Deve Gowda. In 2018, HD Kumaraswamy, its chief ministerial candidate claims his intention is not to share power with either the Congress or the BJP and that he would prefer fresh polls if the verdict is unclear. That is just public posturing. His best bet would be for the two principal parties to fall short of a simple majority, forcing the single largest party to do business with the JD(S).

Last updated: May 15, 2018 | 20:26
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