The 2 PM update: Focus on Karnataka

At around 2 PM, when we were publishing our first report, the average tally of 6 out of 10 Vokkaligas were voting for lotus across Old Mysore region which was completely turning the conventional wisdom upside down. This was five years ago, in 2019, When H.D. Kumaraswamy was the Chief Minister of Karnataka and Congress was in alliance with JDS. This is one of the lesser understood peculiarity of Karnataka politics. The average JDS voter is far more anti-Congress than an average BJP voter – with the exception of the Muslim voters, of course. Thus despite an alliance and despite their fellow Vokkaliga being a chief minister, average JDS voters refused to vote for the Congress. There is a certain history to this behavioural pattern. For many decades, Janata Karyakartas, especially in the Old Mysore region, have been fighting pitched political battles with Congress leaders and workers in every village and town, so these rivalries cannot be wished away overnight just because the top leadership makes an alliance just to come to power.

Much water has flown through river Cauvery since then and the entire alliance math has changed as now it is BJP which is in alliance with the JDS. Average JDS workers do not have the same enmity with BJP, in fact many still reminisce about the 2006 alliance years when H.D. Kumaraswamy had become the CM, the first time around with the support of the BJP and they believe that one of the reasons why JDS lost its charm for Karnataka voters, especially outside the Old Mysore region was the refusal to hand over the government to B.S. Yeddyurappa adhering to the 20-20 agreement made then. To that extent, BJP and JDS are natural allies in the state, generally, complimenting each other through their strengths in different regions.

Also, after a long time, the original Ramakrishna Hegde coalition of Lingayats, Vokkaligas and Brahmans which was created as a counterbalance to the KHAM (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi and Muslim) alliance of the Congress, is once again coming together in Karnataka, this time perhaps to counteract the AHINDA alliance of Siddaramaiah (mostly made of backwards and Muslims). This is an important experiment carried out by BJP in Karnataka, a state with which the central leadership has somehow not come fully to terms with. It is a longstanding belief in Karnataka that whenever Lingayats and Vokkaligas come together, they are virtually invincible as together they form roughly 33% of vote-share and also manage to bring together another 12-15% votes of smaller castes owing to their leadership position in villages.