By Munibar Barui
The intensity drama of shift of power from the former Uttarakhand CM Tirath Singh Rawat to the new Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami took place in this month itself. In similar veins, the former Karnataka CM B.S. Yediyurappa abruptly quit his post after having a meeting with BJP high command in New Delhi.
For some time, Yediyurappa remained silent on his successor. But on evening of July 27, 2021, it was revealed that the new CM would be Basavaraj Somappa Bommai, the son of the former CM late S.R. Bommai. Mr. Bommai has no links to the current Hindutva ideology of the BJP and is a politician who has followed the footsteps of his fathers thereby bearing socialist inclination. He also revere’s B.S. Yediyurappa as his political guru.
However, this was not the case in 2013. During the Karnataka Assembly elections of 2013, B.S. Yediyurappa was the then CM who was ousted by the party. So, Yediyurappa quit BJP and joined hands with Karnataka Janata party. But B.S. Bommai didn’t follow his guru’s footstep rather he stayed in the party. Such move infuriated B.S. Yediyurappa, and he openly called B.S. Bommai as a back-stabber and betrayer. B.S. Yediyurappa in an interview in 2013 to the IndianExpress opined that “He kept on dilly-dallying and in the end, did not come with me and did not allow others to come with me too. He has betrayed me in that way. He ranks number one for betrayals”. The fallout took place from 2021 to 2014. In current context, we can see a complete shift in understanding wherein after eight years, it was B.S. Yediyurappa who had proposed the name of his protégé as his successor. He took his oath on the very next day on July 28, 2021. In a nutshell, B.S. Bommai is also a Lingayat community member and a former Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister. He had also served as Water Resource Minister of the state. Nevertheless, some senior BJP party members have confidentially spoken about his “excessive bootlicking ability”, and “the propensity to bend over backwards to gratify the party high command”. There have also been criticismsregarding the Home Department which is apparently not being run in an efficaciousway in current context with reports of bribery in the policingstructure.