Success to setback: How BJP failed to solve K’taka equation
NEW DELHI: On Tuesday evening, hours after the results to the Karnataka assembly were announced, and two days before the swearing in of BS Yeddyurappa as the chief minister of Karnataka, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) functionary was dismissive of the chances of the post-poll Congress-janata Dal (Secular) alliance and said: “The Karnataka chapter is over. We make a government with two MLAS; you think we won’t be able to make it with 104 MLAS. It is time to focus on the next election.”
On Saturday evening, a few hours after Yeddyurappa’s resignation on the floor of the house, another BJP leader closely involved with the party’s Karnataka affairs, said, “Things did not work out. We tried but failed in getting the numbers.”
In that journey from Tuesday to Saturday lies the BJP’S political failure in Karnataka, despite achieving relative electoral success. Conversations with a set of BJP functionaries and associates, all of whom wished to remain anonymous, reveal multiple layers of miscalculations.
For one, the BJP never thought that the Congress and the JD(S) would come together so quickly. “We had begun celebrating. The mandate was clearly against the Congress. In fact, we were cheering when the JD(S) was doing well in the Vokkaliga belt, because it meant a dip in Congress seats. We hadn’t thought that the Congress would so quickly offer chief ministership to HD Kumaraswamy,” said the first BJP leader.