As BS Yeddyurappa takes baby steps in organising his new political party, the Karnataka Janata Paksha, he could well be looking for the skill sets in a person similar to that of Ananth Kumar, the very man whom he holds, singularly, responsible for breaking his 40-year-old association with the BJP.

Yeddyurappa, always mission-driven, has not let any opportunity to miss his target. When asked if he would be king or kingmaker, he said: “101 per cent.” King or Kingmaker? “Not Kingmaker.” This, even as he constantly excused himself to tell some of his associates about organising the launch of his party’s massive rally at Haveri.

His constant worry, two days before the Haveri rally, was management of the crowds which came true. These were factors that he never had to bother about so much when he and Ananth Kumar decided to join hands to build the party, way back in 1988. Ananth Kumar would take care of all that with his band of home-grown ABVP activists.

His remarkable capacity to identify issues that would be closest to the people was what made him an agitationist. To a large extent, it was left to what some of his close associates described as his other half, Ananth Kumar. Or, in the words of Ananth Kumar, Hakka-Bukka, the two brothers who set up the Vijayanagar kingdom in 1300-1400 AD.

“We are a team as united as Hakka-Bukka,” Ananth Kumar had told a party convention in Hubli before the 2004 assembly elections, describing his relationship with Yeddyurappa. Hakka-Bukka were two brothers who set up an army to overthrow the Sultan of Delhi and the Bahmani Sultans and their legendary unity is part of folklore.

As much as Hakka-Bukka functioned like the CEO and COO of the modern era, the Yeddyurappa-Ananth Kumar team has broken up virtually splitting the party and making the first-ever BJP government in the South of India a lame-duck one.

“Yeddyurappa is a very impatient man and very stubborn. If only he had waited, he could have very well won the Shimoga Lok Sabha seat and become a minister in 2014 when the NDA comes back to power,” says a close associate, who did not want to be identified, of Yeddyurappa.

But, patience and a short-temper have been like a double-edged sword for Yeddyurappa. When the 2004 elections threw up a hung assembly and the Congress coalition government came into existence, he kept the entire party in the dark and struck a deal with HD Kumaraswamy of the Janata Dal (Secular) to become the deputy chief minister in 2006.

This, even as the party patriarch, LK Advani, pointed out his distrust of HD Deve Gowda and told Karnataka partymen that if a coalition has to be formed then it should be led by the BJP as it has more number of seats than the JDS. The elders in the party succumbed to his wishes because they knew he would join the JDS after splitting the BJP. His talks with the JDS patriarch, HD Deve Gowda, were at an advanced stage.  

Yeddyurappa remained his stubborn self. Not very different from his 1975 days when the then Bharatiya Jana Sangh and the Congress had won seven seats each in the Shikaripur town municipality, Shimoga, and there was a lone independent. He made the Independent vice-president and became president. He had practised Operation Kamala, a euphemism to induct elected representatives into the party to gain power, almost 33 years before implementing it at the state level when he led the party to victory in the 2008 assembly elections.

The BJP’s ascent to power was to a very large extent attributed to Yeddyurappa for more than one reason. His blitzkrieg tour of the state was to tell people that he had been denied a chance to become the chief minister by the JDS as per the arrangement, famously called the T-20 cricket match, where Kumaraswamy was to hand over power to him after 20 months.

His major caste group of Lingayats, the dominant community in North Karnataka, was delighted to find a state-level leader from their own community, 28 years after Veerendra Patil was removed summarily from the chief ministership by Rajiv Gandhi. His outpouring against the JDS’s father-son duo, perhaps, was also triggered by the denial of the assembly ticket by Deve Gowda in the then united Janata Party in 1978.

He got elected to the assembly for the first time in 1983 on a BJP ticket and never failed to highlight the problems of the farming community, not very different from what Deve Gowda did. His similarity with Deve Gowda’s style of functioning was evident in his control over his departments. But, unlike Deve Gowda, he did not hesitate to brazenly break rules, despite good and written advice from bureaucrats, culminating in his doing the rounds of courts in land and mining scams.

Yeddyurappa’s passion to get what he wanted has, more or less, worked for him and will be one of the focal points in the 2013 assembly elections. He appears to still enjoy the support of the Lingayat community, particularly in the rural areas. His public meetings have attracted people from other sections of society as well. His effort has been to get the caste axis of Lingayats – some sections of the OBCs – the Left sect of the Scheduled Castes and Muslims. 

What worries the state BJP leadership is the extent to which he will cut into their votes and this would certainly make a big difference, just like S Bangarappa’s Karnataka Congress Party did to the Congress. The leadership has no illusions that it would sit in the Opposition for more than one reason.

The Congress, on the other hand, has yet to put its act together and come out to present a united face to the people. The JDS, strong in Southern Karnataka districts, has trouble on its hands in Hassan, the home district of the Deve Gowda family.

Karnataka has never elected a regional party to power, with the exception of the united Janata Dal headed by Ramakrishna Hegde and Deve Gowda. And, voters have never tolerated any dissident leader who has “troubled” an elected government from functioning. Just like the Congress (in 1994) and the JDS (in 1989 and 1999). On all the three occasions, each of the parties changed three chief ministers, just like Yeddyurappa got Sadananda Gowda out of office and could well get the incumbent, Jagdish Shettar, now.