Cong’s first resort triumphs in the battle of the strategists

floated the rumour that Preetham Gowda, the lone BJP MLA from Hassan district, was ready to switch sides, and said others would join him soon.

In an environment when nothing was clear to anybody, including the MLAS, the media took everything coming out of each camp and ran with it.

REDDY BOTHERS AND YEDDY HIMSELF

Still, if the BJP eventually lost out, it was not for want of trying. While BJP president Amit Shah may have declared Janardhan Reddy to be persona non grata, the mining baron actively tried to woo Congress MLAS from North Karnataka. As did Sriramulu. The Congress has released tapes that it alleges proves that inducements were offered to MLAS.

Even Yeddyurappa himself, the Congress alleged, offered blandishments to some MLAS. While the authenticity of the tapes cannot be verified, it is a fact that BJP tried to get some MLAS across.

For a couple of days the disappearance from public view of Anand Singh , the MLA from Vijaynagar and Pratapgouda Patil, the MLA from Maski, resulted in all kinds of conjectures on how they would vote. Eventually none of it was required as the BJP and Yeddyurappa accepted defeat by resigning instead of putting the motion to vote. The Congress-jd(s) strategists had clearly won over their BJP counterparts. At least, for the moment. The Lok Sabha elections were held five years after prime minister PV Narasimha Rao ushered in economic reforms, four years after the demolition of Babri Masjid, and months after the so-called Hawala scandal (where the Rao government implicated leaders from across parties, who later got acquitted).

The BJP declared Atal Bihari Vajpayee as its prime ministerial face. Riding on the promise of change, being a “party with a difference”, aggressive nationalism, and its Hindutva agenda, at a time when the Congress was in disarray, the BJP emerged as the single-largest force.

It won 161 seats, compared to 140 by the Congress. But the regional parties and the Left held the key.

The house was fragmented, the game was open.

PTI JD(S) leader HD Kumaraswamy (left) and Congress leader DK Shivakumar celebrate chief minister BS Yedyurappa’s resignation in Vidhana Soudha, Bengaluru, on Saturday.