The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may have denied former Karnataka deputy chief minister KS Eshwarappa a Lok Sabha ticket this election, but the veteran leader is not one to be deterred. Despite the party threatening action against him, Eshwarappa is now contesting as an Independent candidate against BJP’s BY Raghavendra in Shivamogga, and has even found a way around the Election Commission (EC)’s diktat to not use Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pictures for his campaign. So while filing his nomination on Friday, April 12, Eshwarappa brought along his own version of Modi — an uncanny doppelganger of the PM — who theatrically stood by and cheered him along as he completed the nomination procedures.
The EC had warned Eshwarappa against using Modi’s pictures for his campaign after the BJP lodged an official complaint, alleging that Eshwarappa does not represent the party and has been misleading the public by claiming he is contesting on behalf of the PM. The veteran leader, however, is widely considered a loyal footsoldier who helped build the party from the ground up in the state. He has notoriously made several communal speeches, where he called for the demolition of mosques to make way for the construction of temples. He once claimed that he did not want a single Muslim vote, a statement which he later retracted.
Eshwarappa’s rebel candidacy comes in the wake of BJP’s alleged “family politics”, which he says is a matter of pain for many Hindutva activists in the state.
Besides his wife Jayalakshmi, Eshwarappa was also notably accompanied by former BJP leader Goolihatti Shekhar during the filing of his nomination. Shekhar, a former state minister who quit the party in April 2023, had alleged in December last year that he was denied entry to the Hedgewar Museum in Maharashtra’s Nagpur solely because he was a Dalit. The museum is located at the headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).