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It’s Amit Shah vs BS Yediyurappa Now - Place Your Bets

When he changed the spelling of his name, replacing a "d" with an i", BS Yediyurappa (formerly Yeddyurappa) was sworn in as Chief Minister of Karnataka.

The good luck accrued from the spelling Feng Shui may have just run out.

On Monday, the 77-year-old’s central party leadership AKA Amit Shah dissed Mr Yediyurappa big-time, rejecting the three Rajya Sabha candidates the Karnataka Chief Minister had recommended. Instead, Shah publicly announced that three entirely different names for the elections to be held on June 19.

Yediyurappa had selected hotelier Prakash Shetty, a current Rajya Sabha MP whose term is expiring and the brother of one of his cabinet minister’s as his trip. Shah’s selection includes former Prime Minister Deve Gowda, who is also being backed by the Congress. (It was Mr Yediyurappa who, just over a year ago, brought down a government led by Deve Gowda’s son in alliance with the Congress).
The two BJP choices who’ve made the cut are former RSS workers and are seen as close to BL Santosh, the General Secretary Organization (main link between the BJP and the RSS) and the central player in a power struggle with Mr Yediyurappa in Karnataka.

Those who are in Yediyurappa’s camp say that the BJP’s decision on the candidates reflects the sort of "high command culture of the Congress" that he rails against regularly, proclaiming that the party must follow its cadre-based policies and operations.

Shah and Yediyurappa have never gotten along and the BJP has plenty of evidence of Yediyurappa’s pull in his home state - he ensured the party won 25 of 28 seats in the general election; in by-elections in December, his candidates won 12 of 15 seats.

Since he became Chief Minister for the fourth term last year, Yediyurappa has had to contend with the ambitions of B L Santosh, who is on secondment to the BJP from the RSS. In 2018, months ahead of the Karnataka assembly election which saw the BJP defeated by the Congress and Deve Gowda’s Janata Dal Secular or JDS, Yediyurappa had publicly blamed Santosh for the internal rebellion he was facing. At that time, a popular OBC leader, K S Eshwarappa, had rebelled against Yediyurappa and floated his own front. He has since returned to the fold and is now a cabinet minister.
Santosh has made international headlines for his tweets, one of which (since deleted) threatened interference in the USA elections reacting to a Bernie Sander’s tweet on anti-Muslim violence in Delhi. In 2019, he clashed with Yediyurappa over candidates for the Lok Sabha. Santosh won that round with a little help from Shah. Santosh wanted a ticket for Tejaswi Surya (who has also made international headlines for his since deleted sexist tweets) from Bangalore (South); Yediyurappa was supporting the candidature of Tejaswini Kumar, the widow of BJP union minister Ananth Kumar. Santosh prevailed.

And ever since July 2019, when he was appointed to his current powerful post, talk has grown over the fact that he will replace Yediyurappa as Chief Minister. A leader close to Yediyurappa says, "Modi and Shah don’t like any powerful regional leader. Yediyurappa built the BJP in Karnataka single-handedly when he was the lone man holding the saffron flag. He will never leave any battle for his honour. If Shah and Santosh except a walkover, they will be surprised".

The trouble for Yediyurappa is that he now 77 - the BJP has made an exception for him on its rule of 75 as the retirement age that is supposedly enforced by the party, at least for those leaders who tend to have their own opinions.
Yediyurappa, who briefly quit the BJP in 2011 when the party pressured him to resign as Chief Minister over a corruption case, returned to it ahead of the last state election. His dynamic with central BJP leaders has always been a fractious one.

Now, he is furious, believing that at a time when he’s trying to contain coronavirus in the state, the party is moving to undermine him. His ministers are also a querulous lot, divided in camps pro and against him.

Both Modi and Shah are close to Santosh and would like a leader owing allegiance to them as the Chief Minister of the only southern state where the party is in charge.

"A pandemic is not the time to do politics but Shah is relentless against those leaders he does not like in the BJP and (also) leaders like Uddhav Thackeray," shares a senior BJP leader. Operation Lotus the plan to topple the Thackeray-led alliance government in Maharashtra is still in play.

Sources close to Yediyurappa rule out any voluntary retirement based on age or other reasons. And Santosh is getting impatient about a promotion, possibly to the state’s top position. This one is a clash of the titans - Yediyurappa vs Shah.

(Swati Chaturvedi is an author and a journalist who has worked with The Indian Express, The Statesman and The Hindustan Times.)