It was a full Council of Ministers' meeting in February 2004, when the then Karnataka Chief Minister SM Krishna, chairing it, dropped a bombshell. Krishna announced that he had decided to go in for early Assembly polls along with the Lok Sabha polls scheduled in April as the state was expected to face another spell of drought that summer. He felt the ire of farmers would be made into an election issue by the opposition parties if one were to wait till October (when the term of the Assembly was to end).
The other reason was that it had become difficult to combat late former Prime Minister AB Vajpayee's' India Shining' slogan (a marketing slogan coined to refer to the overall feeling of economic optimism in India in 2004). Senior ministers Mallikarjuna M Kharge, N Dharam Singh, Kagodu Thimmappa, and others strongly opposed the idea, saying that a good monsoon had been predicted and that by October, the state's political mood would also have cooled down.
Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar, who was Krishna's blue-eyed boy, wrote a message on a slip of paper, “Sir, we will not come back if polls are advanced,” and passed it to his cabinet colleagues sitting next to Krishna. The slip never reached the late CM, as they were too scared to hand it to him. The Assembly polls were held simultaneously with Lok Sabha elections in April 2004, and the Congress party secured just 65 seats from the 132 it had won in 1999.
A suave, farsighted one of the highly educated CMs Karnataka had, Somanahalli Mallaiah Krishna was a Fulbright scholar with sartorial elegance and a flair for music, books, and tennis. He held posts ranging from Speaker to Deputy Chief Minister to Opposition leader, state Congress president, Union Minister, and finally a Governor. While the Vokkaliga community, which he represented, rejoiced that the CM's post had come back to them after nearly two decades, Krishna's tenure from 1999 to 2004 was a roller-coaster ride for him.
Perhaps no CM had faced turbulent times as Krishna did. Kannada film icon Rajkumar and later, former MLA and JD(U) leader H Nagappa were kidnapped by sandalwood poacher Veerappan during his tenure. While Rajkumar was eventually released after 108 days of being held hostage, Nagappa was killed while in captivity.
The failure of the southwest monsoon resulted in Karnataka being unable to release the stipulated quantum of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu. The failure to release Cauvery water got Karnataka a series of raps from the Supreme Court, following petitions by Tamil Nadu's late CM J Jayalalithaa alleging non-compliance of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal’s award.
Krishna's continuous defiance of the apex court's directives came to a boiling point when he was to be hauled up for contempt of court. “If the state governments play to the emotions of the people and violate court orders, then God help this country. If an elected government says it cannot release water because of a law and order problem, then let it go. You (Karnataka) have come to that,'' the Supreme Court said.
Krishna relented and tendered an unconditional apology to the court and agreed to release the water. Back home, he had decided to "atone” for having agreed to release water when farmers in the Cauvery basin were still suffering.
The atonement was a 100-kilometre padayatra from Bengaluru to Mandya, and it touched an emotional chord with the Cauvery basin farmers. For six days, braving October's inclement weather, he walked along with his cabinet colleagues. His close associates were sceptical of the 70-year-old ‘suit-boot’ Krishna rubbing shoulders with the common man. From daybreak to sunset, he would walk and rest at a farmhouse where his staff would give him an oil massage therapy for his fatigued legs. “If I had gone by road, people would have said, I skipped some villages, an aerial survey would have served no purpose, hence I opted for the padayatra,'' he told the media.
Krishna seemed to have an uncanny knack for getting into a legal mess, whether it was the Rajkumar kidnap or the Cauvery imbroglio. During the abduction of the actor, the court came down heavily on Karnataka for its explanation that there would be a law and order problem if Veerappan's associates detained under TADA were not released in exchange for securing the safe release of Rajkumar. “You can quit if you don't know how to maintain law and order,'' the court said.
However, it was not all turmoil for him. Krishna is forever associated with branding Bengaluru as the IT city. It was during his tenure that Bengaluru city began to draw the attention of IT companies, who evinced interest in investing. This was the time when another counterpart of his, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, was wooing foreign investors. Krishna turned a sleepy Bengaluru city into a startup capital hub of India and a global destination.
Retired bureaucrat MK Shankarlinge Gowda, who was secretary in the Chief Minister's Office (CMO), recalling his association with the late leader, said: “Krishna was the first CM to introduce the IT policy, apparel parks, and give a fillip to the automotive sector. He was also the first CM to introduce the system where citizens could send their grievances through emails, which was unheard of earlier,'' he added.
Retired IAS officer BR Mamatha, who was a special officer in Krishna's office, recalled that she owed the confidence she got in administration to him. “He would call me late in the night and say I am sending this file; read it and give your observations. This instilled a lot of confidence in me,'' she said. While she was working as a public relations officer in the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, then known as Bengaluru City Corporation, Mamatha was asked by Krishna to do some image-building exercises. “Those days there was no PowerPoint presentation, and I showed whatever notes I had made on my laptop. He was impressed and inducted me into his office. Apart from image building, he was keen that the reply sent to the public on their grievances should be personalised,'' she stated.
In January 2020, Krishna released his autobiography, Smritivahini, in a set of six books. It had some interesting insights into his life and political journey. In one section, he talks about a private conversation with former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, where Singh is supposed to have said that Krishna was doing commendable work as chief minister and that if the UPA came to power in 2004, there was a possibility of either Singh or Krishna being considered for prime ministership.
In 2009, Krishna was inducted into the Union ministry after the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government returned to power for the second time. He was given the charge of external affairs but resigned when then PM Manmohan Singh decided to go in for a reshuffle in 2012, and he was given indications of not being continued.
As leaders representing the Vokkaliga community, Krishna's association with former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda was never good. Deve Gowda used to shoot off missives to then CM N Dharam Singh (2004–2006), alleging corruption during Krishna's tenure as Chief Minister. According to political insiders, Gowda had insisted that Krishna should be sent out of Karnataka when the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular) came together to form the first coalition government in Karnataka to keep the BJP, which had emerged as the single largest party at bay in 2004.
For the coalition government to survive in Karnataka, the Congress leadership made Krishna the Maharashtra Governor in December 2004. During his tenure as Governor, he refused to give assent to an ordinance sent by the Congress-led Democratic Front government on banning dance bars in the state. His stand was that any decision on the issue should be in the form of legislation. In 2008, Krishna returned to Karnataka to join active politics.
A media savvy person, occasionally his media advisor, HB Dinesh, would hurriedly organise a get-together with some journalists. “Sahebru Cafe Coffee Day nalli iddare bandbidi,” (Sahebru is at Cafe Coffee Day, come), he could say. It would be a 30-minute informal interaction on all issues except politics.
His confidante and former cabinet colleague Nafees Fazal recalls that the most humiliating point for Krishna was when he was not renominated to the Rajya Sabha in 2014. “Sonia Gandhi was very fond of Krishna, and he was a staunch loyalist, and that hurt him," she added.
Two years later, Krishna sprung a surprise by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2017. The talk in political circles was that his decision was prompted by family pressure to protect his son-in-law, VG Siddharth, owner and founder of Cafe Coffee Day, from IT and ED sleuths. Sources close to him said Union Home Minister Amit Shah had called Krishna after he quit the Congress and promised the Vice President of India's post.
Shah did not keep his promise, and the IT and ED investigations against Siddharth's companies tightened. Siddharth died by suicide by jumping into the Netravathi river in July 2019. After he joined the BJP, the late CM did not get the respect he deserved, as he was neither consulted by the state BJP unit nor did PM Narendra Modi visit during his frequent forays to Bengaluru. In March 2023, he was conferred the Padma Vibhushan.
Forgotten by the BJP and troubled by age-related ailments, Krishna announced his political retirement in 2023. In an interview with the media, asked why he had the largest share of hardships during his tenure, Krishna said: “Difficult times sometimes teach you the real lessons the hard way.”
Even today, for those at the helm in Karnataka cutting across party lines, Krishna’s ‘Brand Bengaluru’ is the playbook in their attempts to better the Silicon City. An emotional person, he did not hesitate to take risks that would later turn out to be disastrous, and one example was to advance the Assembly polls in 2004.
Naheed Ataulla is a journalist who has covered Karnataka politics for over two decades and is a former Political Editor of The Times of India.