Mangalore & Udupi slips out of BJP hands

May 8, 2013

Photo and Report by C D Souza

For the BJP which has suffered a humiliating defeat in the assembly elections 2013 in the state the rout in the coastal districts of Mangalore and Udupi is more pronounced and comes as an utter shock.

The party has been able to win only one out of the eight seats in Dakshina Kannada and one seat in Udupi out of the five.  The only consolation has been that it has wrested Karkala assembly constituency from the Congress and has retained Sullia by a wafer-thin majority but not before giving jitters to the party, preventing a total rout.  This win in Sullia and Karkala cannot and will not compensate the overall loss and ignominy it has suffered in these two districts.   In 2008 the BJP had won four seats out of the eight  in Dakshina Kannada and four seats out of the five in Udupi except Karkala.

The biggest electoral surprise surprise from this coastal district is Congress grabbing Mangalore North where Congress  candidate Moideen Bava  won against a political strongman like Krishna Palemar.  In fact Palemar’s victory was said to be a foregone conclusion and he was expected to win hands down.     One wonders whether the ‘blue boy image’ exploited by its opponent worked against Palemar.  Palemar lost by a margin of 2000 votes but a win is a win whatever might be the margin of victory.

The poor performance of BJP was expected following the  ULB election results a month earlier showing a wave against ruling BJP.   But none expected the party to receive such a drubbing in this coastal belt where both the BJP and RSS have grass root presence.  The result is in tune with BJP’s poor performance at the state in general.   The BJP was expecting to win three seats in Dakshina Kannada and two more in Udupi and certainly this shock will take some more time for the BJP to sink in.  It remains to be seen whether the party can pick up the threads from here to rise and put up a creditable show in the parliamentary elections scheduled in less than a year from now.

The party’s poor performance is also a huge setback for RSS strongman Kalladka Prabhakar Bhat,  said to be the one with a remote control over the BJP in taking all crucial decisions  including selecting candidates or showing them the door.  The victory of Congress candidate Shakunthala Shetty from Puttur and Haladi Srinivasa Shetty  as an independent from Kundapur, clearly show that Prabhakar Bhat is no more the strongman he was,  once upon a time.  Both Halady and Shakunthala Shetty crossed swords with Prabhakar Bhat who showed his power by ousting them from the party.  Congress candidate from Bantwal  Ramanath Rai also had given a direct challenge to Prabhakar Bhat saying it was a battle for victory between him (Rai) and Prabhakar Bhat and not BJP candidate Rajesh Naik in Bantwal.  This challenge should have been the rallying force for the RSS and BJP to set its house in order and fight for their survival, which of course did not happen.  Hence may not be easy for the party to come out of the present moribund state to fight against the Congress in the forthcoming parliamentary elections.

The Congress victory in seven out of the eight constituencies of Dakshina Kannada and four of the five seats in Udupi is viewed as a mandate against five years of  BJP’s  misrule in the state. In the coastal districts the party’s rout demonstrates   people’s utter bitterness and resentment on the four  issues  that shook these districts in the last five years.  It was in fact a mandate against the  pub  attack, attack on churches, the home stay attack and the frequent incidents of moral policing  witnessed  frequently during the party’s rule.  BJP may say that it has no hand in these incidents directly but the fact that it allowed this kind of stifling atmosphere to continue and its taciturn approach to it proved to be its undoing.

Geralin one of the supporters of BJP and Palemar says “We had expected the party not to do well but the kind of setback we have experienced now is something  that was totally unexpected.  It is a huge gale which swept us all together”.

No doubt it was a wave against the BJP rather than pro-Congress wave.  In Mangalore South J R Lobo winning by a margin of 11000 votes against four-time MLA Yogish Bhat has clearly demonstrated people’s anger.  People irrespective of race, religion and caste had voted for the Congress as they wanted to teach a lesson to the BJP.

Despite anti-BJP wave it was expected that the party might perform well in these districts due to the grass root presence of the BJP.   Unfortunately, it has now come to light that even staunch BJP and RSS supporters have not shown keen interest in ensuring the party’s win.

Nonetheless, the win for the Congress has made the minority catholic community more belligerent.  Ever since the church attacks the gap has widened between the hard line Hindus and hard line Catholics and the supporters have often carried out a war of words in some of the web and social media.   The Catholics were bent upon teaching a lesson to the party in the elections and had worked with renewed vigor to ensure the victory of J R Lobo in Mangalore South, the only constituency where BJP candidate was directly pitted against   the catholic candidate.  This rout of BJP is the revenge they have against the BJP, which they feel is the cause of all their troubles.   BJP government had gone out of their way to placate the catholic minority by withdrawing the cases booked against them for attacking the police and public and for destroying public property.  But that has not helped the party electorally.

The question now is whether the party will be able to come out of the morass it has found itself in to emerge as a political force to reckon with. It has to do some soul searching and there is plenty of time to do it.  But the quicker it does the better it is if at all it is serious about its survival.

D.k Constituency Winning candidate list