Losing Hebbal: Congress ministers blame CM's Kurubas

Bengaluru: Congress leaders are literally digging the grave to find the reasons for the defeat of their candidate, C.K. Rehaman Sharief in the Hebbal by-election, at the hands of  the BJP candidate.

Mr Sharief,  grandson of former union minister, Mr Jaffer Sharief, lost to Mr Y.A. Narayanaswamy, a BJP member of the State Legislative Council by a big margin despite a lot of hullabaloo created by Congress leaders much before the polls.

The by-poll result has come as a shocker for the ruling party which had expected a victory over the BJP candidate at least by a narrow margin. A couple of ministers with whom Deccan Chronicle spoke, candidly attributed the defeat to a wrong choice of candidate plus the Kurubas voting for the BJP candidate. But, they preferred to be anonymous following restriction on airing their views publicly, that too when the party has lost two of the three seats that went to polls.

They opined that confusion over the selection of candidate by the party created a lot of problems. Firstly, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had unanimously decided to field MLC Bhairati Suresh as the party’s official candidate from Hebbal. As a pre-poll exercise, Mr Suresh spent a couple of crores much before the announcement of dates for the by-poll. However, a big drama unfolded after a section of senior leaders led by Mr Jaffer Sharief and others, pressurized the high command to give the ticket to Mr Rehaman Sharief who had lost 2013 Assembly polls by a narrow margin.

This shocked the CM's camp who had thought that the high command would not reject the candidate proposed by Mr Siddaramaiah. Upset over the denial of ticket to Mr Suresh, a majority of Kuruba voters supported Mr Narayanaswamy, a Vokkaliga. Even Mr Suresh reportedly became neutral without evincing interest to work for Mr Sharief.

After the JD(S) gave the ticket to a Muslim candidate, the saffron party gave a communal touch to the candidature painting it as a clash between  Hindu and Muslim candidates. This  created a division in the electorate.

Many Muslim leaders who were said to be unhappy with Mr Jaffer Sharief's rise in politics,  remained neutral in the bypoll.