The Kuruba community has been demanding the Schedule Tribe tag and held a massive rally in the outskirts of Bengaluru on Sunday. But the glaring absence from their rallies, press conferences has been that of the community’s tallest leader- former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. Even when asked about the issue in a press conference, a visibly irritated Siddaramaiah said the reporter should pose the question to those who are organising the rally, refusing to comment any further. In the rallies, several leaders have still been voicing their hope for Siddaramaiah to join their campaign but he has been consciously absent.
Siddaramaiah has been alleging that the BJP and RSS has been behind the struggle for ST tag for the community. He has accused the Panchayat Raj minister of Karnataka KS Eshwarappa of trying to get political mileage out of the issue and not using his influence in the government to secure the ST tag for Kurubas. The former CM has challenged Eshwarappa to have the state Cabinet, of which he is a part, pass a recommendation and pass it to the Union Government which is also headed by the BJP.
While Siddaramaiah’s allegation of an RSS hand in the rally could be a contributing factor, a source close to Siddaramaiah confirmed to TNM that he has been put in a tough spot by the Kuruba leaders in the BJP, many of whom are former party colleagues and more importantly, mentees of the Leader of Opposition. If he visibly associates himself with the movement now, no matter what the outcome, Eshwarappa gets the credit and emerges as another power centre in the community.
Even invitations for Siddaramaiah to lead the movement now is a trap, the source says. BJP leaders have already left their mark on the movement, with yesterday’s rally being attended by four sitting ministers from the community. So Siddaramaiah getting any credit in case the demand fructifies is minimal.
The BJP has been making several efforts to wean the community away from the Congress since they came back to power in 2019 and of the legislators who abandoned Congress and joined the BJP were Siddaramaiah’s close aides like Byrathi Basavaraj, N Nagaraju (MTB) and R Shankar. In the past, the BJP has also tried to woo the Kurubas by saying they declared Kanakadasa Jayanthi (named after a saint the community follows) a public holiday. But these efforts had not yielded the desired efforts as barring local candidates, the community, as a whole, still looked up to Siddaramaiah as its leader. The ST tag issue is aimed at rectifying that, many believe.
Since the 2019 elections, the BJP has been making inroads into a region that has been elusive for the party-Old Mysore Region. So the Kuruba rally is helping them consolidate this effort in districts like Mysuru, Mandya, Chamarajanagar and Tumakuru that have large numbers of Kuruba votes. Siddaramaiah‘s camp believes that if he identifies himself with this rally, it would lend legitimacy to this effort.
During his tenure as the Chief Minister, many voices within Congress accused Siddaramaiah as focussing too much on his own community and losing the image of being an AHINDA (acronym for minorities, backward classes and Dalits in Kannada) leader. Supporting the ST tag for Kurubas, who as OBCs already have 13% reservation, he could further alienate many backward communities who have supported him in the past, sources add.
As questions about his absence grow louder, Siddaramaiah has been attempting damage control- he has repeatedly tried to ‘warn’ Kurubas of the RSS ploy to break the community, which after Lingayats and Vokkaligas, is one of the dominant vote banks in Karnataka. He has also thrown a challenge at Eshwarappa asking why he cannot get both state and Union governments to make the reservation happen and only ‘fooling’ the people with public agitations. But despite these overtures, the issue is surely a double-edged sword for the former Chief Minister.