Kumaranna Begins Second Innings As Karnataka CM
“I will be the king and not the kingmaker,” H D Kumaraswamy had said in the run-up to the Karnataka polls.
Bengaluru, May 23
“I will be the king and not the kingmaker,” H D Kumaraswamy had said in the run-up to the Karnataka polls. His words proved prophetic as the 58-year-old Vokkaliga leader today wore the crown despite his JD(S) finishing a poor third in the electoral battlefield.
On the margins of Karnataka politics for a decade, Kumaraswamy, the third son of JD(S) supremo and former prime minister H D Deve Gowda, was widely tipped to play a supporting role in government formation, but nobody gave him even an outside chance of landing the chief minister’s chair.
1. As the counting of votes progressed on May 15, and it became clear that there would be no straight winner in the three-horse race for power, fate smiled on Kumaraswamy.
2. A badly bruised Congress, which failed to form its governments in Goa, Manipur and Meghalaya despite being the single largest party, moved in swiftly and declared it would unconditionally prop up a JD(S) government despite the party having only 37 MLAs, less than half the Congress’s strength of 78.
3. Kumaraswamy quickly lapped up the opportunity and staked claim to form the government.
4. Governor Vajubhai Vala, however, swore-in BJP’s B S Yeddyurappa to form the government as the leader of the single largest party in the 224-member Assembly, whose effective strength is 221.
5. Vala’s decision could only delay Kumaraswamy’s ascension to the Karnataka throne, as Yeddyurappa, facing an imminent defeat during the trust vote, resigned within three days of being sworn in.
6. A galaxy of leaders including Congress’ Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav among many others descended on Bengaluru to fete the leader, who until a few days ago was perceived would be just an also-ran.
From movies to politics:
Seen as an “accidental politician”, Kumaraswamy’s first love was films. A fan of Kannada thespian Dr Rajkumar, he was attracted to cinema since his college days. He took up filmmaking and distribution and produced several successful Kannada films, including the recently released “Jaguar”, starring his son Nikhil Gowda. Kumaraswamy, who grew up in a political environment, entered electoral politics by contesting the Kanakapura Lok Sabha seat in 1996 and won. He subsequently lost both parliamentary and assembly elections.
He got elected to the assembly for the first time in 2004, when the JD(S) joined the coalition government headed by Congress’s Dharm Singh after the elections threw up a hung House. In 2006, he rebelled and walked out of the coalition with 42 MLAs against the wish of his father, citing threat to the party, and formed the government with the BJP, becoming the chief minister during his very first term as MLA.
Under a rotational chief ministership arrangement, he helmed the state for 20 months. When the BJP’s turn for chief ministership came, he reneged on the arrangement and brought down the Yeddyurappa government within seven days.
In the election that followed in 2008, the BJP formed its government in Karnataka, its first south of the Vindhyas.
Kumaraswamy’s outreach to rural folk with ‘gram vastavya’ project under which he stayed in villages to understand their problems earned him popularity, but he also faced corruption taint in an alleged mining scam.
(With PTI inputs)