Veteran leader S.M. Krishna (84), who quit the Congress party—his home of 45 years—only to join the BJP raises questions over the current leadership of the grand old party as well as the commitment of the leader who switched sides.
Krishna, who had a dream run as a chief minister, governor and external affairs minister, had called a press meet at the lawn of his sprawling residence in Sadashivanagar to announce his exit from the Congress party and said he was “hurt and anguished.” “I quit because my dignity and self respect was at stake,” he added.
The senior leader's exit from the party is likely to dent the Congress' prospects in urban areas in the upcoming assembly polls, especially in Bengaluru city as Krishna was nicknamed 'Bangalore CM' owing to his dream to make the city on par with Singapore. Ironically, under the present Congress government, the city is making global headlines for all the wrong reasons—from garbage pileup, crumbling infrastructure, notorious traffic to mass molestation. Will the corporates who had happily set shops in the sleepy city under Krishna's captaincy turn their back on the Congress is another pertinent question.
A marginal impact on the Vokkaliga votebase cannot also be ruled out though Krishna never positioned himself as a caste leader. “I was never a Vokkaliga leader but a worker of the Congress party, incidentally born into a Vokkaliga family," he had said.
The party is also beset by the fear that Siddaramaiah's appeasement of Ahinda would alienate upper caste communities from the Congress even as the BJP is is trying to unite backward castes in the state. The recent exit of Srinivasa Prasad, a prominent dalit leader, after being dropped from state cabinet had upset the dalit voters.
Prominent caste leaders Prakash B. Hukkeri (Lingayat), Jaffer Sharief (Muslim) and Janardhana Poojary (backward class) and A.H. Vishwanath (Kuruba) have been vocal in their support for Krishna.
With more and more senior leaders joining the disgruntled brigade, the state Congress is bracing for a showdown between the 'original Congressmen' and 'migrants' (led by Siddaramaiah), much before the state goes to polls in 2018. Krishna's exit seems to be the final nail in the Congress' coffin in Karnataka.
