The Hindu : Parties vie for the Lingayat vote

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Mar 20, 2004

National

National - Elections 2004

Parties vie for the Lingayat vote

The BJP's assiduous wooing of the community has helped it to become the No. 2 party in Karnataka, says M. Madan Mohan.

The Lingayats are the focus of attention in Northern Karnataka as political parties get ready for the State Assembly and Lok Sabha elections from Karnataka. Lingayats, like the Vokkaligas in the southern belt, are the dominant community in Northern Karnataka, a region comprising twelve districts under Belgaum and Gulbarga divisions.

Though the absence of a caste-based system of enumeration comes in the way of providing exact figures of the Lingayat population in the region, the estimates given by the first Backward Class Commission headed by L. G. Havanur in 1975 may be used as a basis for estimating their strength. The Backward Class Commission noted that Lingayats accounted for 14.64 per cent of the State's population, with around 60 per cent of them residing in the Northern Karnataka region. This projection had been worked out on the basis of the 1971 census.

The highest Lingayat concentration was noticed in the undivided district of Dharwad, followed by Bijapur, Belgaum, Gulbarga, Raichur, Bidar and Bellary districts. Mysore and Chitradurga were among the districts having a substantial population in the southern belt. Though the community has not been known to indulge in block voting, it had favoured the Congress initially. After the split in the Congress in 1969, the Lingayats switched their loyalty to the Congress-O faction led by the late Nijalingappa, a fellow Lingayat. It is this group which later provided the nucleus for the anti-Congress outfits which emerged in the region. The Lingayats provided the political base for the Janata Party and its later avatars, in later years.

The Lingayats were quite upset when the late Veerendra Patil, the only Congress politician from Northern Karnataka to become Chief Minister, was sacked in 1989. Veerendra Patil had not even completed a year in office, and was stricken by paralysis, when he was given marching orders. He was replaced by S. Bangarappa, a move which angered the Lingayats. Besides, the Congress has not been able to produce a Lingayat leader of comparable stature.

During the run-up to the 1999 election, S.M. Krishna, the then KPCC president, did try and project some of the Lingayat faces of the Congress. But it was not of much help. Nothing substantial has been done during his tenure as Chief Minister to appease them or win them over. As a result, the Lingayats have been forced to turn to the non-Congress parties, namely the Janata Dal and the BJP, both of which have wooed the community assiduously. In fact, both parties have built their political edifice in Northern Karnataka on the support of the Lingayat community, a strategy that has served them well.

The Janata Dal won the 1983,1985 and 1994 elections mainly because of the backing it got in Northern Karnataka and lost the 1989 and 1999 elections due to internal squabbling. The BJP won its first Lok Sabha seat in the State in 1991 from Bidar; the support it got from the region enabled it to become the No. 2 party in Karnataka. The BJP won eight of the 12 seats in this region in the 1998 Parliament poll.

The JD (S) has also been wooing the Lingayats, but it is an uphill task considering the track record of the party, which is perceived as being anti-Lingayat and anti-Northern Karnataka. Basavaraj Bommai, MLC, who is with the JD (U), which has decided to align with the BJP, says that voters in the Northern Karnataka region are pro-NDA. The only exception could be Gulbarga, according to him. K. Raghavendra Rao, Retired Professor of Political Science, Mangalore University, and Patagundi, Professor of Political Science, Karnatak University, say that recent developments are likely to make the anti-Congress votes go to the BJP.