BS Yediyurappa has resigned from his position as Karnataka’s chief minister, exactly two years after taking oath as CM. The BJP is currently confronted with two major issues. One, ensuring that Yediyurappa does not rebel against it, as he did in 2012, and two, ensuring that the party’s support base in the Lingayat community, of whom the outgoing CM is the tallest leader, is maintained. His successor is yet to be named by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Despite Yediyurappa’s departure being in the works for months, there is no clear front-runner, underscoring his influence in Karnataka’s political landscape.
In the 2019 elections, the BJP had its greatest ever exposure in Karnataka, capturing 25 of the 28 Lok Sabha seats. While the party enjoyed widespread support among Hindus, it received an overwhelming 87 percent of the vote from Lingayats community, who make up nearly 17 percent of the state’s population. Following the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress-JD(S) alliance fell up, and Yediyurappa, a Lingayat, was appointed chief minister. The BJP’s major support base in Karnataka has been the Lingayats, but they are also very much loyal to Yediyurappa.
Karnataka is the first and only state in the southern region where the BJP has been able to gain power on its own. The BJP’s victory in the state is largely due to Yediyurappa’s mobilisation of the Lingayats. The BJP learned the hard way in the 2013 assembly elections that it cannot count on Lingayat support unless Yediyurappa is on board. After being forced to quit as chief minister in 2011, Yediyurappa split from the BJP and founded the Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP). In the 2013 assembly elections, the KJP dealt enormous damage to the BJP, which had its worst showing since the 1994 state elections.
In Karnataka, caste politics has long played a significant role. The Congress, led by Devraj Urs, perfected what was known as the AHINDA coalition, which encompassed minorities, backward classes, and dalits in its heyday. In the 2018 elections, the Congress was caught between two stools, attempting to play the AHINDA card on the one hand and luring Lingayats with a special religious status on the other. The Lingayats abandoned the BJP in large numbers in the 2013 elections, according to a comparison of community-wise vote shares from the 2008 and 2013 CSDS-Lokniti polls. In the 2014 elections, Lingayat support surged (to 63 percent, according to CSDS-Lokniti), and Yediyurappa was welcomed back into the BJP.
While it gained some support among the Lingayats, it lost support from other groups. If the 2019 election results are any indicator, the BJP, which is at the pinnacle of its electoral popularity in Karnataka, would confront a similar challenge. It cannot alienate the Lingayats, who are its most ardent supporters, but it must also be viewed as giving other Hindus a larger share of authority. The BJP’s first test will be whether or not Yediyurappa’s successor is a Lingayat. We’ll find out soon enough.
