Advantage BJP?

The suspense continues over the assembly elections in Karnataka with the Election Commission inclined (mercifully) to conduct it in May while the State Congress is trying its darnedest to defer it till November. The reasons are as clear as daylight. The party is in total disarray and not in a state of preparedness to face the electorate. This is ironical, considering that it is the main opposition party and should in the normal circumstances, be banking on the anti-incumbency factor to work in its favour. The party also boasts of a host of stalwarts and battle-scarred veterans, so it is all the more strange that it is running away from facing the people.

With Congress on a sticky wicket, the main pretender to the throne, the BJP is on a high, banking on its solid Lingayat base and the sympathy factor. Once the gong is sounded for the elections, the party's well-oiled machinery and spin doctors are sure to go on overdrive, and milk the back-stabbing and the betrayal by its former ally, the JD(S) to the fullest extent. That the chief ministerial aspirant who lost out in the race was BS Yediyurappa, a Lingayat, will further cement its Lingayat votebank. Add to that, the fact that the party high command will be roping in the master strategist Arun Jaitley, who reaped success in Gujarat two times in a row, and you know why the party is oozing confidence. If the BJP still loses, it will have only to blame itself.

What about the JD(S)? The party's supremo, Deve Gowda is sulking and betraying an instinct to self-destruct. His recent statements - that he is sorry that he was born in Karnataka - will not win the goodwill of any section of society. The veteran politician is showing signs of desperation and this will also alienate him in own party. If his opponents make his sorry-to-be-a-Kannadiga statements an election issue, how the former Prime Minister will respond to it, is a mystery that is only known to him. One thing is sure. You don't win votes by alienating the very people because of whom you once ruled the country.

So at the moment, it looks like Advantage BJP. But in politics, you can never be sure of anything…