Shirahatti
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
Assembly elections
A bellwether seat
Prabhash K Dutta, March 17, 2023: The Times of India
From: Prabhash K Dutta, March 17, 2023: The Times of India
The Karnataka electoral pot is on the boil with the state set to go to polls in less than two months. Recently Prime Minister Narendra Modi held roadshows while kick-starting various projects. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) expends a lot of effort in the state so that its southern bastion continues to be its centre of expansion.
But can the BJP retain power in Karnataka?
Unfortunately, there are no such trusted astrological predictions available. However, there are some bellwether seats in Karnataka, with an electoral habit of reflecting the minds of the majority of the state. On top of the list is Shirahatti.
Before the 2018 Karnataka assembly election, Shirahatti accurately gauged the mood of the Kannadiga people for 12 consecutive state polls. In 2018, a street-smart political move by the Congress proved it wrong but only for about a year.
How Shirahatti votes
Occupying a central location in Bombay Karnataka, now renamed Kittur Karnataka, (one of the six regions of Karnataka), Shirahatti is the assembly constituency No. 65 in the 224-member state legislature. It is a seat reserved for Dalits or Scheduled Caste members.
Shirahatti has voted for the same party as the ultimate ruling party in Karnataka since 1972 — that is, for 51 years — in every single election. Back then, it was a general seat. WV Vadirajcharya won the seat for the Congress, whose Devraj Urs became the chief minister. Urs remains the longest-serving Karnataka CM, holding the office for seven years over two tenures.
The Congress kept winning this seat uninterrupted until 1983, when its sitting MLA Upanal Gulappa Fakeerappa rebelled to stand as an Independent. Fakeerappa won the seat and announced support to the Janata Party, whose Ramkrishna Hegde was sworn in as the chief minister in 1983. Incidentally, Hegde was a Congress rebel as well. He had rebelled during the Emergency.
The Janata Party won the seat in 1985. Hegde took the oath as the chief minister of Karnataka for the second time, only to resign over a phone-tapping scandal after surviving a bribery scandal involving his son.
Vote the incumbent out
The Congress revived itself in 1989 in Karnataka though it was on a losing streak nationally. It won back the Shirahatti assembly seat, and with it power in Karnataka. Veerendra Patil became the chief minister.
A string of communal riots — triggered by the harassment of a girl in Channapatna, stoning of a shop in Kolar and an attack on a mosque during Ram Jyoti procession in Davangere — saw the then Congress president Rajiv Gandhi sack Patil as Karnataka CM. The official toll was 46 in the week-long frenzy in Karnataka.
Sacking Patil proved costly for the Congress in the next election, for he was recovering from a stroke when these communal riots began in Karnataka at the height of the Ram Mandir campaign that also saw Mulayam Singh Yadav struggling to bring peace to Uttar Pradesh.
In the next election, the Janata Dal won the Shirahatti seat, giving HD Deve Gowda Karnataka’s chief ministership.
In 1999, the Congress won the seat back once again, with SM Krishna becoming the first Karnataka CM since Urs to hold the office for a full term — Hegde had occupied it for over five years but over two terms.
Switch hits
Two elections stand for their uniqueness in Shirahatti results and the subsequent formation of the government. The first was in 2004, which returned a hung assembly. The BJP emerged as the single-largest party but the Congress won this seat, finishing second in the seat tally.
The Congress’ Dharam Singh, however, took oath as the CM as his party forged a coalition with Deve Gowda’s Janata Dal (Secular)–JD (S). The coalition collapsed midway, with Deve Gowda’s son HD Kumaraswamy walking away with his supporters.
Kumaraswamy joined hands with the BJP to become Karnataka CM in 2006, with an understanding that he would step down from office in favour of BJP’s BS Yediyurappa. The new coalition too collapsed twice within a matter of six weeks in October-November 2007, and the state went to the polls in 2008.
In 2008, the BJP won the Shirahatti seat — which had become an SC seat that year — and Yediyurappa returned as the Karnataka CM. In the next election, in 2013, the Congress snatched this seat from the BJP to return to power in Karnataka, giving it only the third CM with a full term in Siddaramaiah.
Yeddiyurappa sworn in as CM in 2019
The 2018 Karnataka election was the second major test for Shirahatti, which sent a BJP candidate to the assembly. The constituency had gauged the electoral mood of the state correctly as the BJP emerged as the single-largest party but fell eight short of the half-way mark.
The Congress, the second-largest party in the assembly, offered the third-largest party support to have its CM. The JD (S) agreed and Kumaraswamy became the CM but for a year and 64 days.
An ‘Operation Lotus’ brought back the BJP to power in 2019, with Yediyurappa taking oath as the CM. Now, the party is seeking another term with Basavaraj Bommai as the incumbent CM in the 2023 assembly election.
Are there others?
There are seven other bellwether seats — Yelburga, Gadag, Jevargi, Baindur, Tarike, Harapanahalli and Davangere North. Of these, Yelburga in Koppal district has got the last six elections right.
Baindur in Udupi district, Tarike in Chikmagalur, Harapanhalli and Davangere North in Davangere district have voted for the election winner in the past five assembly elections. In 2018, they voted for the BJP, which won 108 seats in the 224-member assembly.
Having voted for the same side as the ruling party in the previous four assembly elections, Gadag constituency — in the same Gadag district as Shirahatti — voted for the Congress in 2018.
Same was the case with Jevargi in Gulbarga district — a 100% bellwether strike rate in the previous four elections before the 2018 assembly polls. In 2018, Jevargi voted for the Congress, which did form the first government after the election but its government had actually been voted out in the polls. Later, the BJP controversially ousted it from power in 2019.
So, when Karnataka goes to the polls in May this year, watch out for these constituencies. They might hold the clue to what lies in store for Karnataka for the next five years.
