Caste dynamics that won Congress power in Karnataka

Caste was always a factor during the Karnataka elections. However, what surprised many was the manner in which the Lingayat vote bank tilted in favour of the Congress which ended up winning 67 out of the 118 areas dominated by the caste group in the state.

The Congress will be pleased with this improvement considering that it had managed to win only 20 seats in the Lingayat-dominated belts in 2008.

This was largely because the Bharatiya Janata Party had then projected B S Yeddyurappa as its leader and it had a major trend in its favour.

This time, the BJP tried to counter the Yeddyurappa factor by appointing Jagadish Shettar also a Lingayat as its leader. However, the Shettar magic clearly did not work as the votes were split three-way, resulting in gains for the Congress.

Yeddyurappa had visited every Lingayat mutt in the state and sought their support.

Lingayat leaders told him that they would not vote for the BJP, but would instead go with the Congress which has a better chance of coming to power. Although Yeddyurappa did not benefit directly from the Lingayats, he managed to take away BJP’s vote share.

For the Congress, it was redemption.

It had completely lost out the 17 per cent vote share of the Lingayats ever since former Chief Minister Veerendra Patil was unceremoniously dropped on health ground by the late Rajiv Gandhi.

Today, the Lingayats have changed their stance and have gone with the Congress largely in all parts of the state. However, there are efforts on to push Lingayat leader Shamnur Shivashankarappa’s name for the chief minister’s post.

The Congress will no doubt give the Lingayats a very good representation as a reward. However, the party will tilt more towards the Dalits, Other Backward Castes and the minorities who have dominated their vote bank.

The new Congress chief minister could be named from one of these castes.

Kharge, a contender for the CM post, is a Dalit while Siddaramaiah is a Kuruba (OBC).

The Muslims too voted for the Congress. They are most likely to have at least two ministers in the Cabinet rank from their community.

Moreover, the Congress will also keep in mind that the OBC-Muslim combination has worked well for the party in nearly 40 constituencies.

The Congress cannot, however, claim that it has managed to take the Vokkaliga vote bank. It has lost majorly in all Vokkaliga-dominated belts to the Janata Dal-Secular. The only place where it managed to pull of a win in the Vokkaliga-dominated belt was at Mandya.