The Hebbal by-election isn’t even about Hebbal anymore. It’s turned into a battle at so many levels that there’s only one allegory here and that it’s a muddy, filthy wrestling pit, where the political barons who claim to rule us –as slippery as they come - are fighting to come out with dignity intact.
Welcome to the snake pit! This is where an HDK and a Siddaramaiah’s tu tu main main goes way beyond the Hublot and the Lamborghini! A luxe wrist watch and a luxe sports car. Really? Flaunt all the watches you want, drive the flashiest cars. But do fix our problems – garbage, connectivity, and power! Fix the BESCOM guy who tells me after a five hour long power cut that I am the only one who keeps complaining and that Bescom does a stellar job, and then leaves hurriedly after the guy atop the transformer yells out that one of the cables has burnt right through and that’s why we won’t have power until I shell out a small fortune and get a new 30 foot cable laid!
Fix the bad guys, Mr CM. Don’t care about the Hublot or any of the five other brands you want to flaunt!
So, the Hebbal story is not how a chief minister or a leader of the opposition lives the life fantastic. They just do. That’s politics. As is the Chief Minister having to contend with a low blow from an old enemy, the paterfamilias of the old Janata Parivar, who, for his own reasons would rather the BJP win the seat than the Congress!
Where does that leave the Congress old guard, which got what it wanted, in denying the Congress state chief minister of a winning candidate? In depriving Siddaramaiah from fielding his own candidate and bringing in their man, the BJP and the JDS have been thrown together. Not just that, it’s raised the prospect of a whole new face of the future for the Congress in D.K.Shivakumar. Those are, win or lose, Hebbal’s unexpected consequences!
As for the results…. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has thus far plunged into campaigning. He must win at all costs, prove he puts the party above personal considerations.
But that’s why one doesn’t get Delhi. They must know that its move to cut Siddu down to size by nixing his candidate for theirs is a last ploy by the bilious old guard to ensure that the BBMP defeat is replicated here in Hebbal, and in the Zilla and Taluk panchayat, thus laying the ground for a powerful argument to replace him as he hits 1000 days this May. That’s an open secret. Siddu isn’t a man they’d gather to their bosoms. At one level he marches to his own Ahinda drummer that has no place for the left of centre minority politics that the Congress espouses. Or for that matter, his old party, the JD(S).
Hebbal, then is no longer about cutting Siddaramaiah down to size or Rahaman Jaffer Sharief, and his grandfather’s Jaffer’s last attempt at setting a Sharief legacy in stone. It’s now an overt and obvious ploy by the Congress old-timers to show Siddu the door. But while that’s the main show, the side-show is the Hindu versus Muslim tussle with BJP striking the unexpected mother lode.
In its bid to consolidate its Hindu vote by fielding a Vokkaliga - at the insistence of D.V. Sadananda Gowda – the BJP candidate now has the open if unstated support of the Janata Dal(S), which, in an ‘if we cant have it, you cant have it either’ move, actively encouraged the Janata Dal Secularists in various low income pockets here to vote for the BJP candidate! If the BJP does run away with the spoils, the ever smiling Sadananda could be flashing his pearlies even more! That’s one lucky Vokkaliga!
Either way, the 40,000 strong Vokkaliga vote bank here is now being wooed as ardently by the BJP as they are by the JD(S). Despite putting up a candidate who is a Muslim to eat into the Congress votes for Rahaman, the JD(S) now has to contend with the fact that their own Muslim followers are being weaned away to the Congress - Hooked on a diet of minority consolidation, at the behest of a JD(S) insider Zameer Khan.
In other words, the Muslims are being asked to vote for one Muslin candidate – Jaffer Sharief’s progeny - and tank the hapless JD(S) candidate, also a minority and a Muslim. The BJP Vokkaliga candidate is the unwitting beneficiary of the fury of a father and son, who for different reasons want to slay the Siddaramaiah success story before it takes on mythic proportions.
HDK’s animus is a storied tale of intrigue and betrayal, a Game of Thrones epic that has equal elements of drama and pathos. An overseer of the city’s waste management, and then a film producer, HDK, the younger son was never seen as the inheritor of his father’s mantle. The older brother Revanna was the one, and his close friend then was Siddaramaiah. And when the JDS did the deal with the Congress – and later the BJP - on sharing power, Siddaramaiah was quietly edged out and HDK brought in as deputy CM. The family party put its faith in family before party. HDK vs Siddu – it’s an old story that gains traction every time the ballot boxes come out.
At every given opportunity, HDK has tried to discredit bete noire Siddaramaiah and deprive him of a victory. Remember how he played spoilsport with the BBMP elections and how it was Zameer and Cheluvarayaswamy who threw the JDS’ weight behind the Congress to wrest the civic body from the BJP? The secularists outmanoeuvring the majoritarians.
This time, the Minorities versus the Majority is the story. And while H. D. Deve Gowda, the JD(S) canny patriarch is desperate to prove that the Vokkaligas will snap to attention when he snaps his fingers, and not dance to the tune of a junior lieutenant, containing the Muslim leaders who have broken ranks and are openly working for baby Sharief cannot be easy.
And let’s not forget D.K.Shivakumar’s long curve ball that buttresses his credentials as a leader who can pull off the unexpected in constituencies as diverse as Bengaluru Rural and Urban and now Hebbal, leaving Congressmen who will not participate in a night of the long knives way, way behind. If, that is, his methods win the Congress, Hebbal.
The irony is that it wasn’t meant to be any of this. It shouldn’t have been a fight to the finish for a Chief Minister who has coasted through his first 1000 days in the blink of an eye, virtually unchallenged, sitting pretty with a comfortable majority in the house, following in the footsteps of Congress legends like S. Nijalingappa and S.M. Krishna.
Hebbal would in all likelihood have been won hands down, if Siddaramaiah’s man for all seasons, Byrathi Suresh had been given the ticket. Instead, Siddu has been given the opportunity to say ‘I told you so’ to the cabal that calls the shots in 24 Akbar Road, (which by the way may no longer be the Congress Party’s calling card, served as they have been with an eviction notice!!).
If the Muslim voters don’t close the gap, that’s the 4,000 odd votes that Jaffer Sharief’s grandson lost by, the last time around, then the Congress old guard will have egg on its face. As for Mr Deve Gowda, that was some strategy – throwing the dice to not win the seat, or get his party the votes, but to lose it…
Hit wicket, anyone?
