M Gautham Machaiah
With the Supreme Court directing the BS Yeddyurappa-led BJP government in Karnataka to face a floor test at 4 pm on Saturday, all focus is now on former minister DK Shivakumar, who is charged with the safekeeping of Congress and Janata Dal (S) legislators.
This is not the first time Shivakumar, a master strategist of the Congress, is entrusted with such a responsibility. In 2002, when the then Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh faced a no-confidence motion, Shivakumar had personally escorted all Congress MLAs from Mumbai to Bengaluru and kept the flock together. He was then the cooperation minister in the SM Krishna cabinet and a trusted lieutenant of the chief minister.
In 2017, when Congress MLAs were being poached in Gujarat on the eve of the Rajya Sabha elections, where Sonia Gandhi’s political advisor Ahmed Patel was the star candidate, the legislators were dispatched to Bengaluru. Shivakumar, who was the energy minister in the Siddaramaiah cabinet, had housed them in a golf resort.
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In what the Congress says was an attempt to demoralise him, the income tax department had then raided the resort and several properties of Shivakumar. The department took away Shivakumar from the resort and confined him to his house in Bengaluru for three days, while his brother DK Suresh held fort. Within hours of the IT raid ending, Shivakumar was back in the resort, unfazed and unbroken.
At the end of the day, he had not only ensured that not even a single MLA was poached, but also personally delivered them to Gujarat on time for the elections, which Ahmed Patel won after much drama.
Shivakumar had shot to fame at the young age of 25 after he contested his first assembly election against political giant HD Deve Gowda and lost by a narrow margin. He won his first election from Sathanur in 1989 and became the prisons minister in the Bangarappa ministry at the age of 30.
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A fierce Congress loyalist, Shivakumar has been accused of several acts of omission and commission including illegal granite mining, land grab, corruption and rowdyism, but has so far not been handed a conviction. He and his wife recently declared assets worth Rs 730 crore.
Now, with the elections to the Karnataka assembly resulting in a hung assembly, Shivakumar is back in the limelight. The BJP, which has won 104 seats cannot prove its majority in the House unless it poaches members from the JD(S)-Congress combine, which claims the support of 117 or 118 MLAs. All the opposition MLAs are now in the custody of Shivakumar.
The BJP is confident of engineering defections from the opposite camp, with senior leader Shobha Karandlaje announcing, “We have the support of 120 MLAs and will prove our majority.”
An equally confident Shivakumar adds, “I can assure you 100 percent that all our MLAs are with us. Not even one member will cross over to the BJP. I have managed Maharashtra and Gujarat MLAs… just wait and watch.”
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Interestingly, Shivakumar has an acrimonious past with the Gowdas of JD(S) whose government he is now striving to install. In 1998, he is said to have played a crucial role in the humiliating defeat of former prime minister Deve Gowda’s son Kumaraswamy in the Lok Sabha elections from Kanakapura. In 2004, he ensured the defeat of the senior Gowda from the same constituency at the hands of journalist and political greenhorn Tejaswini Gowda.
Life has now come a full circle for Shivakumar, who is once again the man of the moment, except that this time round he is forced to bat for his sworn enemies.
(The author is a political commentator and a senior journalist)
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