Bengaluru: JD (S) patriarch H.D. Deve Gowda’s renewed efforts to steer his party to power in Karnataka in 2018 could well remain a distant dream, according to his colleagues in the party.
His party won three seats in recently concluded Assembly polls in Kerala.
Mr Gowda, while reacting to the outcome of Assembly polls held in five states, stated that people prefer regional parties. He cited the victory of TMC in West Bengal and AIADMK in Tamil Nadu to buttress his claim that JD (S) could return to power during Assembly polls in 2018.
With such plans in mind, the party had announced H.D. Kumaraswamy as the CM candidate. But, JD (S) leaders cutting across caste lines, painted a grim picture of the possibility of the party getting closer to power.
These leaders cited three key reasons: First, Mr Kumaraswamy seems to lack the political acumen of his father, Mr Deve Gowda who had honed his skills in Hassan district politics in the seventies and eighties before experimenting the same during nineties. Unlike his father, Mr Kumaraswamy preferred to keep himself off grassroots every time an election got over. This deprived him of a grip on politics of different districts in the state.
Second, in the eighties and nineties, the party had a pool of leaders from different social background. Under ‘Janata Parivar’, many Lingayats, Muslims, OBC and Scheduled Caste leaders were groomed and many of them continued their journey with Mr Gowda when he formed Janata Dal (S). These leaders were not only popular in their districts but could also influence voters of their community in neighbouring districts. JD (S) could no longer enjoy the luxury of falling back on second rung leaders because there were none who could influence voters of their community in their constituencies and beyond. Third, the BJP got the backing of Lingayats and a large chunk of scheduled caste and scheduled tribe votes while the Congress got Muslims and a significant amount of Vokkaliga votes. Besides this, since Mr Siddaramaiah is at the helm, Kurubas would stay with Congress at least in the next Assembly elections.
Therefore, the ambition of Mr Gowda to emulate TMC or AIADMK would not fructify, these leaders added.
