Number games: Do they tell the real story?

If the C Fore pre-poll survey released last week, that put the Congress way ahead of all the other political rivals in the state with a whopping 120 seats was a wake up call for an opposition BJP, upping the ante under the all-seeing eyes of Amit Shah to beat the incumbent, many in the Congress were equally spooked by the results!

First, the timing. Why announce a survey so early, and allow the opposition a window into what your electoral thinking and strategy, is. After all, its not rocket science!  All surveys look at similar demographics and issues. And the timing of the survey! Maybe, the chief minister simply wanted to shore up his own credentials to the party’s top brass. Maybe, he was saying, there’s no-one else who could lead the party to victory… Either way, if you give a listen to the BJP – who watch every move of the seemingly unassailable Congress government which, barring the Lingayat imbroglio, hasn’t put a foot wrong for months now - they are saying that senior leaders in the Congress are hugely rattled because many didn’t know there was such a survey in the works, at all. 

And two, if Chief Minister Siddaramaiah does indeed pull off a second innings on the back of a huge majority in the assembly polls for the Congress’ last bastion in the south, then their worry is, that with Siddaramaiah, virtually untouchable, it puts paid to the hopes of other hardcore Congress leaders of inheriting the mantle, of having a realistic shy at power in 2018, fulfilling their own political aspirations. 

What’s more, it opens the door to the takeover of the Congress party by the chief minister’s inner circle of ex-JD(S) men. Tough circle to break into, unless you’re the genial C.M.Ibrahim, of course! No wonder, say BJP insiders, the JD(S) leader H. D Deve Gowda hasn’t stopped smiling. These, at one time or the other, were all his boys, after all. No wonder, they say, the son and putative heir H.D. Kumaraswamy, edged out of this particular political conversation, hasn’t cracked a smile in weeks! 

HDD’s soft approach towards his former protege could be put down  to an all too possible backroom Congress-JD(S) tie up rather than the other whisper doing the rounds - the JD(S) going with the BJP scenario. Given the lingering distrust between HDK and the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate B.S Yeddyurappa that would be a no-no.

It’s an old story that recalls their first public link up, the unlikely alliance government of 2006, where, despite the BJP’s healthier numbers, the BJP chose to open their first account in the south  – under Atal Behari Vajpayee’s urging and against L.K.Advani’s unerringly prescient advice – by playing second fiddle to the JD(S), which promptly diddled them out of their just turn at power when HDK refused to let BSY take over as chief minister. 

Water under the bridge? Or does it still rankle? Only time will tell...
So far though, nationally, the BJP cannot be faulted for its electoral tactics, scripting a success story that few envisaged it could, when it lost, inexplicably to the Congress in 2004. Today’s BJP, it must be said, is an altogether different creature. It’s the master of the medium and the message. This story of Congress unease at a rising Siddaramaiah – whom the Congress has, in a break from past practice endorsed as its chief ministerial candidate - is definitely one of the more poison-tipped arrows in the BJP’s slingshot, aimed at unsettling the internal dynamics of the party. Congressmen, many chuffed by the survey results have the counter story - putting this particular piece of ‘disinformation’ down to the BJP’s propaganda machinery which must perforce spin a story of dissension in Congress ranks; More so as the Lingayat wedge between the Shamanur Shivashankarappa group and the newly emergent M.B.Patil group hasn’t yet reached a flashpoint, although it very well could. 

M.B. Patil’s rally of the ‘other’ Lingayats was a huge show of strength. But the Congress is fully cognizant of the fact that the CM’s strategy to winkle a percentage of the Lingayat votes to its own fold, by raising the issue of a separate religion status has blown up in its face, after Lingayat eminence grise Shamanur said the Veerashaivas would rather have 15% reservation. A Mandal redux. And nobody knows how that will end.

The numbers that the survey projects, therefore, may show the vote share that, the parties command. But it does not quantify the emotive Lingayat unease or factor in what the Lingayats could do. They could simply ignore the Congress ploy and stay with the BJP. Or break into two factions, one going with the Congress, the other with the BJP. 

The BJP – the united BJP that is, before the BSY and Sriramulu factions exited in 2013 – won 110 seats in 2008 – drawing on its Lingayat-Nayaka-Brahmin vote; and it was left to a Janardhan Reddy-led ‘Operation Kamala’ for the BJP to shore up the numbers to 118.  Poll tacticians acknowledge that the crash and burn in the 2013 assembly polls, when the BJP lost 60-70 seats by the narrowest of margins, with the difference in many cases being less than 5,000 votes, was because of the BSY-Sriramulu exit from the BJP fold. And that, in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the cold stats showed the BJP – that is the BJP plus Yeddyurappa's KJP plus Sriramulu's BRP - vote share remaining at 43% as opposed to the Congress’ 40 per cent. 

Granted, this was the Lok Sabha and that the difference in the vote share of 3.4% was not related to a battle for the state where, come 2018, it will take on a different colour as the tussle for every seat will centre on hot button local issues. But that was the difference between the two parties – 3.4%! And in some seats, as low as 0-5%.

Interestingly, Congress insiders say that the party never really puts its might behind winning all 224 seats, preferring instead to commit all its resources to a winnable 130-150 seats. But now, as the BJP’s electoral brains trusts changes, investing in the RSS apparatchik and BSY critic, Santosh, who openly supported BSY rival K S Eshwarappa, the question of how the highly emotional BSY will be able to work around this particular challenge will be one of the many interesting developments to watch as the BJP’s strategy unfolds.  

Santosh has been given complete charge of the party in the state, of energizing the grass-roots from the bottom up, spreading the message, while the key nuts and bolts man remains Prakash Javdekar, who takes over charge, replacing long time Karnataka expert Arun Jaitley (who has been promoted to oversee Gujarat) alongside the media whiz Piyush Goel. BSY has apparently even had his knuckles rapped. In short, the BJP is clearly leaving nothing to chance. 

The BJP’s brainstrust meeting on Saturday night, may well salivate at the thought of the Shamanur-Patil rivalry setting off the consolidation of their own Lingayat base. But the numbers in the C-fore survey that show the BJP as being unable to cross the 80 odd seat mark that state intelligence predicts will be the BJP tally, must be a worry. 

Whoever commissioned the survey – the Congress to boost its own image or the regional language television channel linked to the BJP that refused to run it when they saw the numbers - it wont be a cakewalk for a BJP, which so far, lacks the one thing that wins elections -  a rallying call to arms, a story to tell. Neither will it be for the Congress, the fat cat incumbent. Because numbers, after all, never tell the full story.