Congress-backed bandh and a diatribe by Amit Shah sets a nasty tone for Karnataka Assembly poll

Kerala has perfected bandhs into nothing less than an art form almost like its unique classical dance Kathakali. Thank the Marxists of that state for it. In God’s Own Country, bandhs sometimes “coincide” with Fridays or Mondays to ensure long, rollicking weekends or even with key one-day cricket matches. And in Karnataka, bandhs are now beginning to “coincide” with visits of important leaders. Thank Karnataka’s ruling Congress for that. Thursday’s bandh in Karnataka, demanding Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intervention to resolve the Mahadayi river water sharing dispute with Goa, “coincided” with BJP president Amit Shah’s visit to the state . It was only a partial success, but Shah was quick to accuse the ruling Congress of trying to sabotage his election rally in Mysuru. The state will go to elections in the next three months or so — the term of the current Assembly expires on 28 May. [caption id=“attachment_4321095” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of BJP chief Amit Shah. PTI[/caption] The farmers have threatened yet another shut down on 4 February over the same issue, though there are some second thoughts on it. If it materialises, it will “coincide” with the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is expected to be in Bengaluru on the same day. Just in case you think that Karnataka’s BJP leaders are laggards and idlers who know nothing about tit-for-tat bandhs — they have called one of their own on 10 February , the very day Congress President Rahul Gandhi sets foot in Bengaluru for campaigning. Few bandhs in Karnataka in recent past were total successes, and fewer still on account of people’s voluntary participation. A shopkeeper only downs shutters for fear of what might happen if he doesn’t. Bandhs also offer lucky opportunities for looters, vandals, hooligans and those who want to settle past scores with businessmen.

Thursday’s bandh was an election-eve political stratagem, a new diabolical invention in Karnataka. Chief minister Siddaramaiah had said his Congress party had nothing to with the bandh which was, of course, called by farmers’ groups and pro-Kannada outfits. But he winked and nodded in the direction of those who called it, even as his law-enforcers shrugged and looked the other way. Schools were shut and government buses practically didn’t run, which made the protest somewhat more successful than the organisers dreamed of.

At the root of these snakes-and-ladders games is the desperateness of both the BJP and the Congress to outdo each other ahead of the Assembly elections. Parties are desperate Congress has a tough task ahead in the three Assembly elections slated for the next month : Tripura on 18 February and Nagaland and Meghalaya on 27 February. The fight in Tripura is primarily between the ruling CPM and the BJP with Congress as an also-ran. And in both Meghalaya and Nagaland, the Congress is in a fine mess. After these three states, it will be Karnataka’s turn to go to polls, and, come tsunami or earthquake, the Congress wants to retain it. The party is now left with Karnataka, Punjab, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Puducherry to rule.

After the recent near-victory in Gujarat, a return to power in Karnataka will pump adrenaline into the party’s campaign when it fights the assembly polls in Mizoram, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan towards the end of this year. It will also afford the Congress the much-needed bargaining power when it haggles over alliances for the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

And for the BJP, it’s equally important to get back the state which it lost in the 2013 elections after a five-year forgettable regime that saw three chief ministers including Yeddyurappa, corruption, instability and moral policing of a depraved kind The BJP wants to re-open its “gateway to south”, as frantically as the Congress wants to keep it shut it on Modi and Shah. BJP in fix over Mahadayi It’s not surprising then that both the parties are grabbing any issue they can to score points in the election run-up. The Mahadayi river (called Mandovi in Goa) dispute is one. Originating in north Karnataka, the Mahadayi flows in the state for 28.8 km, enters and courses through Goa for 81.2 km before joining the Arabian Sea. Since 1980, when the dispute first flared up, Karnataka has been proposing a project of one kind or the other to divert some water from the river for drinking, irrigation and power needs in some of its northern districts. Goa has been dead set against the idea, on the ground that it will reduce its own legitimate water share. After Goa approached the Supreme Court and the Centre, a tribunal was set up in 2010 to resolve the dispute. The tribunal, whose extended term is coming to an end in August, is slated to begin its final hearings sometime next month. For more than a year now, Siddaramaiah has been trying to turn the dispute into a hot election issue. This prompted Amit Shah to a call Goa’s BJP Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar and the party’s leaders from Karnataka for a meeting last month. Parrikar took the unusual step of writing to Yeddyurappa that Goa would agree to spare water for Karnataka for drinking purposes. Siddaramamah cried foul, saying that Parrikar should have written to him instead of Yeddyurappa. Then came finally Thursday’s bandh, and Shah was clearly not amused. The Mahadayi issue is an emotive one in parts of what is called the Bombay-Karnataka region where the votes of the Lingayat community, to which Yeddyurappa belongs, was key to the party’s 2008 election success and 2013 defeat. So he went ballistic at his Mysuru rally, accusing Siddaramaiah of being indifferent to the murders of “22 workers” of the BJP and the RSS in the state and being more interested in celebrating Tipu Sultan’s birth anniversary than implementing Centre’s schemes. Coming soon: Cauvery verdict As if one river dispute wasn’t enough, an important Supreme Court verdict on the Cauvery water dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu is expected next month. If farmers in a part of Northern Karnataka are het up over the Mahadayi row, the Cauvery verdict may raise political temperature in the southern parts of the state as well. Add to all this the noise over Siddaramaiah’s ridiculous populist schemes and the BJP’s claim that Modi should get credit for some of these; and the chief minister’s gung-ho enthusiasm for pleasing Muslims and the BJP branding him as anti-Hindu. When Siddaramaiah is not gloating over his populist schemes, he takes swipes at Modi over issues ranging from arguably important to downright silly. Governance of the state? It can go to hell. It already has. All this guarantees an election campaign in Karnataka that will be as diabolical in its scheming as it will be sinister in its indifference to real issues.