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Deve Gowda's meddling puts Dal in danger

M D Riti in Bangalore

It looked too good to be true, and it was. Exactly four years ago, Ramakrishna Hegde, J H Patel, H D Deve Gowda and S R Bommai walked side by side across the lawn of Hegde’s bungalow, Kritika, in Bangalore, smiling benignly into the waiting cameras. They were shooting their campaign video for the approaching assembly election, in which their main electoral plank was just one thing: the promise of unity.

They assured a weary state, which had experienced three Congress chief ministers in five years, that they, the four constantly bickering stalwarts of the Janata Dal, would stay united during their tenure, and that they were promoting just one man, Deve Gowda, as their chief minister elect.

Now, exactly a year before the next assembly poll, the Dal, ruling in Karnataka, encounters the same loss of image and credibility that the Congress once had. Chief Minister Patel is facing snowballing dissidence within his own party, believed to be sponsored chiefly by his former friend and boss Deve Gowda. Hegde, comfortable in his Delhi ministry, is enjoying the spectacle of two of his current foes slugging away at each other. Bommai, who has been on the sidelines for a long time now, is playing bystander, waiting to see whether he can support either side to his ultimate advantage.

Patel has confronted various levels of dissidence over the past two years that he has been chief minister, and taken the floor of the state assembly more than once to face a vote of confidence. However, this appears by far to be the most serious situation he has faced, as he is taking on the formidable fire power of Deve Gowda. The next moves in this game of strategy and intrigue should come soon after the Deepavali holidays.

The root of the problem can be traced back to 1994, when Hegde foisted Patel on to Deve Gowda, who was the consensus chief minister of the then combine of the Dal and the erstwhile Janata Party, which won the poll. Hegde virtually compelled Deve Gowda at a breakfast meeting to accept his (Hegde’s) close friend Patel as deputy chief minister. Until the 1996 general election, Patel functioned as Hegde’s eyes and ears in the state government, while Hegde himself was supposed to function as a super chief minister whose advice Deve Gowda would seek on all important issues.

When Deve Gowda found himself as prime minister by default, Patel became his successor as chief minister. By this time, two of Deve Gowda’s four sons, first time MLA H D Revanna and first time MP H D Kumaraswamy, had emerged as power centres around their father.

Revanna, whom Deve Gowda had made a minister although he was a new legislator, was even given the chief minister’s official residence in Bangalore, the stately government bungalow, Anugraha, for his use. Kumaraswamy became known as Deve Gowda’s front man in Delhi political circles.

It was Revanna who is believed to have organised crowds to heckle Hegde and his confidante minister, Anant Nag at the state secretariat and the party office when Hegde raised some doubts about Deve Gowda’s suitability as chief minister soon after the 1994 assembly poll. The then police commissioner P Kodandaramiah, who conducted a police enquiry into the incident, was transferred almost immediately, and offered a Dal ticket for the Lok Sabha poll 18 months later, which he accepted.

When Deve Gowda became prime minister, he promptly had Hegde expelled from the party. A rattled Patel promptly shifted his loyalties to Deve Gowda, visiting him regularly in Delhi, and Hegde promptly included Patel on the list of people he enjoys sniping at every now and then. He even scared Patel by appearing to threaten him after the Lok Sabha poll this spring, when the BJP-Hegde's Lok Shakti combine fared well in Karnataka. After the BJP government took over in Delhi, Deve Gowda found himself at the crossroads, with no clear political future either in Delhi or Karnataka.

He had already burnt his boats in the state by publicly declaring many times that he would never again become chief minister. So he mobilised his two sons to begin signature campaigns expressing doubts about Patel’s lacklustre leadership and the Dal’s prospects at the assembly poll next year.

As an offshoot, Deve Gowda supporters began commuting up and down to Delhi, ostensibly asking their leader to resume taking an active interest in Karnataka politics. Their grouses, they said, were numerous, including issues like the usual excuse for dissidence offered by all party breakers, that party workers were being neglected. They declared recent power and water tariff hikes as anti-farmer, making it obvious that they were offering the man who likes to call himself Karnataka’s son of the soil a route back to Bangalore.

The dissidents's two main demands now are the removal of Patel as chief minister and M P Shanker, the man who was once Deve Gowda’s closest confidante in Delhi, as state Dal chief. Patel insists that he cannot be removed so simply as he was elected by the party, not nominated to that post. He offers the same defence for his own survival, and goes on to insist that a change of chief ministers would be disastrous for the party’s image in Karnataka. However, Deve Gowda loses no time in reminding everyone that the BJP changed chief ministers in Delhi barely six weeks before assembly elections there.

If Patel goes, what next? This is the big question facing the Dal in Karnataka, that none of the senior leaders has the time to address as they are so busy politicking. Deve Gowda can never return as chief minister without losing face and contradicting his own oft-repeated public declarations. Backward class leader K Siddaramiah, the deputy chief minister, might look like an obvious choice, but he does not have a substantial support base in the state.

That leaves Deve Gowda’s sons as obvious aspirants, but senior party leaders readily acknowledge that giving them the state could well be suicidal for the Dal. The obvious beneficiaries of all this infighting are the Congress, the BJP and the Lok Shakti. And if the Dal does not end its recurring problem of dissidence this time, a disgusted electorate is likely to display their disapproval at the hustings next year.

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