Bangalore, April 17, 2013:
It has been a matter of mystery as to why the Congress high command should have gone panicky and given in to pressure in granting party nomination to Anil Lad from Bellary city assembly constituency?
For in the changed political circumstances, with the fall of the Reddys and the consequent dissipation of BJP, the Congress hardly faces any difficulties, in regaining the political primacy it once enjoyed in the district. And the questions of somebody rising in rebellion to spoil the party’s chances hardly arise.
According to the reports, Anil Lad, a member of Rajyasabha was one of the aspirants for the party ticket from Bellary city. Though he has around a year’s tenure to go in Rajyasabha, he staked the claims for party nomination in the assembly election, because he had lost the 2008 election from the constituency with margin of around 1,000 votes. The party High Command after considerable deliberations, ultimately caved in to the threat held out by him that he would field independent candidates if he were to be denied the tickets. In the process of placating Anil Lad, the party high command ignored the claims of several others including Mr. Kondaiah, a MP who opted out of the contest to facilitate contest of Sonia Gandhi from Bellary loksabha seat in 1999 and Diwakar Babu, a former Minister, perhaps one of the few in the party who has a mass base.
An interesting aspect for the jockeying for party ticket in the district is that the Bellary city besides Hospet now rechristened as Vijayanagar, happen to be the only two general seats out of the total of nine, with the rest having been reserved for STs and SCs during the delimitation of constituencies held in 2008. In the event of the success of the Congress in the assembly election, which appears probable at the moment. The jockeying for ticket from Bellary city is an effect jockeying for berths in the future Congress government.
Incidentally, both the nominees selected for two general seats , namely Anil Lad (Bellary) and Abdul Wahab (Vijayanagar) happen to belong to the mining lobby and had had some figured in the dealings done by the infamous mining baron Gali Janardan Reddy.
One can ill afford to ignore the marked changes in the political contours of the district. The BJP started from the scratch and rose to fame riding over the piggy back of Reddys, is practically getting decimated, with the desertion of Reddys. And the effort of the Reddy group to seek an independent political identity outside the BJP, has not exactly has failed to click.
The master mind of the Reddy group Gali Janardan Reddy is out of reckoning, having been faced to cool his heals in the Chenchalguda prison in Hyderabad. His alter ego, Sriramulu, who was goaded to float the new party to “prove their clout”, finds himself all alone in the job. The fledgling party once proclaimed that that it would single handedly fight the election, had a change of heart, when the urban body elections revealed that it enjoys no considerable support. Sriramulu’s efforts to have a political tie-up with other parties have been a cropper, with the offer being dismissed contemptuously by others. .Even the parent BJP did not reportedly evince any interest. Willy nilly it has been forced to plough its lonely furrow and its prospects of making any impact appear bleak.
One of the brothers, G Somasekhar Reddy the Chairman of the state owned Karnataka Milk Federation, is reluctant to contest from Bellary city, which had been his forte all along. The other brother, Karunakar Reddy is lying low, and has carefully distanced himself from the activities of his brother. He has remained with BJP, and wants to contest from Harapanahalli in the neighbouring district of Davangere, from where he had won in 2008.
The clamp down on the mining activities, as per the directions of the Supreme Court, has also put a serious limitation of the flow of money from mining activities not only to the group but to other in the mining activities in the district as well.
Before the debut of the BJP, the Bellary followed a bipolar politics . The Congress and Janata Dal were the main contenders for power, with the former having an edge. When the JD split, its leader in the district, late M P Prakash initially veered round to Hegde led outfit the Janata Dal U and later on embraced Devegowda’s party to ultimately land up in Congress. And as a consequence the Janata Dal (S) s in total with few pockets of influence.ENN
