Karnataka   

It’s a battle royal in Shikaripur

Big fight: Samajwadi Party candidate S. Bangarappa at an election meeting in Shikaripur. (Right) BJP leader B.S. Yeddyurappa being given a traditional welcome in the constituency.

SHIKARIPUR (SHIMOGA district): This is one constituency in the State that has attracted wide attention. The former chief ministers S. Bangarappa (Samajwadi Party) and B.S. Yeddyurappa are involved in a straight fight here.

The stakes are high for both of them.

While Mr. Yeddyurappa is not new to the constituency, Mr. Bangarappa, who hails from the nearby Sorab taluk, is contesting the Assembly elections from Shikaripur for the first time. Shikaripur is one of the Assembly segments in the Shimoga Lok Sabha constituency. Mr. Bangarappa is MP for Shimoga.

In a way, Shikaripur constituency is new for Mr. Bangarappa. He represented the Sorab constituency in the Assembly from 1967 to 1996 without a break.

Mr. Yeddyurappa is a household name in Shikaripur constituency. He contested the last six Assembly elections from this constituency and lost only once in 1999.

What has stood him in a good stead is his contribution to his constituency. As Deputy Chief Minister, he got many development projects sanctioned and implemented, which is acknowledged by the people.

Besides, the movements led by Mr. Yeddyurappa have earned him the image of a fighter.

His padayatra to Bangalore in support of the demand for regularization of “bagair hokum” cultivation and later from Shikaripur to Shimoga to press for fair price for maize when he was Leader of Opposition in the Assembly are still remembered.

Mr. Bangarappa is a charismatic personality. “Essentially, it is a fight between secular forces and communal forces,” he says.

Projecting himself as a leader of Dalits, backward classes and minorities, Mr. Bangarappa questions the credentials of Mr. Yeddyurappa as a mass leader and is confident of taming the “lion in its den.”

Farmers still remember with a sense of gratitude the initiative taken by Mr. Bangarappa in distributing rice in the taluk for free in 2003 when it was reeling under severe drought.

The anti-Yeddyurappa sentiment is quite discernible in some pockets. The complaint commonly heard in the constituency is that the quality of development works is poor and that he saw to it that their implementation was assigned either to his supporters or his party functionaries.

But supporters of Mr. Yeddyurappa dismiss it as part of a disinformation campaign against their leader.

They say that there is nothing to suggest that Mr. Yeddyurappa’s image has taken a beating if the impressive performance of the BJP, under his leadership, in the elections in the taluk after the 2004 Assembly elections is any indication.

They point out that the party won all the five seats in the elections to the zilla panchayat in the taluk, 33 of the 44 seats in the gram panchayats, all the seats in the 17 taluk panchayats and 18 of the 23 seats in the Shikaripur Town Municipal Council.

Mr. Bangarappa says that he polled more votes than the BJP candidate in the Shikaripur segment in the Lok Sabha byelection held in 2006.

The major non-BJP parties such as the Congress, Janata Dal (S) and the CPI have rallied behind Mr. Bangarappa. But the support can at the most serve as a moral booster as these parties have a limited presence in the constituency. It is again Mr. Bangarappa’s charisma that will count.

The constituency has 1,61,072 voters — 81,707 men and 79,365 women.

Lingayats form the biggest chunk in the constituency with a population of 55,000, while Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes account for 30,000. Muslims number 15,000 and those of the Kuruba community 12,000.

The constituency is set to witness the closest contest ever. “Who knows anything may happen at the last minute,” says a farmer at Eesuru village.

But one thing is clear: whoever succeeds, his margin of victory will not be huge.

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It’s a battle royal in Shikaripur

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