It seems that the former Prime Minister, H D Deve Gowda, is going to face a tough battle in the Tumkur Lok Sabha seat, from which he is going to contest the upcoming Parliamentary polls. Tumkur Lok Sabha constituency is seen as a Congress bastion and the seat has been allotted to the JD (S) as per the pre-poll arrangement between the Congress and the JD (S) in the state of Karnataka in the run up to the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Even though the Lok Sabha constituency has been allotted to the JD (S) and Deve Gowda is going to contest from there, sitting Congress MP S P Muddahanume Gowda has filed his nomination papers from the Lok Sabha seat. He said, “I’m filing my nomination as the Congress candidate. I’m not filing the nomination for fun.” This shows that the decision to allot the Tumkur Lok Sabha seat which is seen as a Congress bastion to the JD (S) has not gone down well with the sitting Congress legislator. Not only this, it has been reported another Congress leader and former MLA, has also filed his nomination from Tumkur as an independent candidate.
It is clear that the local Congress leadership is highly disillusioned by the allotment of the seat to the JD (S) and the local leaders seem rather disappointed by it. In fact, even Deputy Chief Minister, G Parameshwara, a prominent leader from Tumkur had also met Deve Gowda and is reported to have requested him to return the seat to the Congress if he was not contesting from the Tumkur Lok Sabha constituency. However, the Congress and the JD(S) have gone ahead with the electoral arrangement and the concerns of the local Congress leadership seem to have been plainly ignored.
As far as the caste dynamics of Tumkur are concerned, it must be noted that it has an equal share of Lingayats and Vokkaligas, followed by Dalits who are the third largest community in Tumkur. H D Deve Gowda is considered a Vokkaliga leader and therefore, as far as caste dynamics are concerned, his electoral battle from Tumkur Lok Sabha constituency is not going to be much of a cakewalk. It must be noted that the controversial move of the previous Siddaramaiah government to recommend religious minority status to the Lingayats had not worked for the Congress. In fact, it had backfired badly for the Congress. The BJP had swept the Bombay Karnataka and Central Karnataka regions which are dominated by the Lingayats. As such, the Congress-JD (S) coalition is bound to lose out on the Lingayat votes in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
Given the above-stated caste dynamics, the disillusionment of the local Congress leadership could prove to be the undoing of the former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda. It can easily be predicted that the JD (S) would grab a major share of the Vokkaliga votes while the BJP would get a dominant share of the Lingayat votes. The BJP is likely to field G S Basavaraj as its candidate. He is a senior Lingayat leader and therefore, it can be expected that the BJP would garner a major share of Lingayat votes. However, since the local Congress leadership is disillusioned with the decision to allot the seat to the JD (S), it seems that there will not be a smooth transfer of Dalit votes to the JD (S). Traditionally, Dalits have been a Congress supporter but the manner in which the local Congress leadership has manifested a sense of disappointment makes the transfer of Dalit votes to the poll partner, JD (S) highly improbable.