Three former Chief Ministers from National Democratic Alliance are in the Lok Sabha race in Karnataka, heating up the campaign scene in the Congress-governed state.
Basavaraj Bommai (Haveri), Jagadish Shettar (Belgaum) and HD Kumaraswamy (Mandya) joined a long list of predecessors who wanted to play an innings in national politics and many of them successfully as well.
While Bommai and Shettar — both Lingayats — are from the Bharatiya Janata Party; Kumaraswamy, a Vokkaliga, is the Janata Dal(Secular) state President and son of former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda.
There have been a total of 23 Chief Ministers of Karnataka (known as Mysore state before November one, 1973) since 1947; 14 of them have also served as members of Lok Sabha, and two Rajya Sabha.
Seven of them — KC Reddy, Kengal Hanumanthaiah, Veerendra Patil, Gundu Rao, S Bangarappa, Veerappa Moily and B S Yediyurappa — shifted to national politics by becoming MPs, after demitting the office.
Basavaraj Bommai is making his debut in the Lok Sabha polls, almost a year after the BJP fared poorly in the assembly polls held in May last year, when he was at the helm.
Shettar is fielded from Belgaum (Belagavi), represented by BJP’s Mangala Angadi, the widow of former Union Minister of State Suresh Angadi.
The 68-year-old former state BJP President had quit the party to join the Congress ahead of the state assembly polls last year after being denied the ticket, in a setback to BJP in the Lingayat belt.
He returned to BJP in January. Shettar was initially reluctant about contesting from Belagavi and wanted Dharwad, which the BJP has given to sitting MP Pralhad Joshi.
“I will be the king and not the kingmaker,” Kumaraswamy had said in the run-up to the Assembly polls in 2018. His words turned prophetic as the Vokkaliga leader occupied the Chief Minister’s post for the second time, despite his JD(S) finishing a poor third in the polls. It was a coalition government with the Congress.
But his tenure was short-lived as the wobbly coalition government that he headed collapsed after 13 months in power.
Kumaraswamy had earlier served as the Chief Minister for 20 months from 2006 as the head of a JD(S)-BJP government.
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