This is why Yeddyurappa, Eshwarappa will never come together

Yeddyurappa and Eshwarappa have strong following, ignoring any one will mean losing out on the votes of the castes the leaders belong to. Thus the BJP has decided to get the RSS leaders to solve the differences between the two leaders.

Yeddyurappa, became the chief minister of Karnataka in 2008 after former Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy refused to step down from power as agreed earlier. Yeddyurappa’s dream of becoming a chief minister (the BJP had joined hands with the JD(S) under the leadership of Kumaraswamy with a promise that Kumaraswamy will step down after 20 months and Yeddyurappa of BJP will be the chief minister for 20 more months of the tenure.) was shattered. In the next elections, he literally shed tears over his plight and got a huge margin of sympathy votes and brought BJP to power for the first time in Karnataka in 2008.

Thus, Yeddyurappa and his flowers of the Lingayat community are important for the Karnataka BJP. However, ill-treatment meted out to him by the BJP high command led him to resign from the party membership and he launched (re-launched) Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP) in 2012. Though Yeddyurappa was elected MLA from Shikaripura constituency in 2013, he had understood that he cannot go far with KJP. Thus he joined without any terms and conditions to BJP in 2014.

Meanwhile, in the absence of Yeddyurappa, the Kuruba community leader Eshwarappa had become prominent in the party. With Yeddyurappa’s return, Eshwarappa and his supporters started opposing his decisions openly. What started as the ego clash grew to the extent that both could not stand each other. When Yeddyurappa gave out a list of appointments for important boards in Karnataka, Esharappa vehemently opposed it, and Yeddyurappa also did the same for Eshwarappa’s plans.

Recently, Yeddyurappa announced a group named Hinda to woo the people from the backwards community to BJP. But in reality, it was his way of getting closer to the High Command in BJP and making his presence felt. This angered Eshwarappa who started his group Sangolli Rayanna Brigade.

Both the leaders organised events under their respective groups HINDA and Sangolli Rayanna Brigade. This caught the eye of the BJP leaders who objected to the fact that these groups were given prominence than the party itself. The party clearly directed both the leaders not to organise any event under either HINDA or Sangolli Rayanna Brigade.

As these two groups were formed by respective castes of the leaders, the supporters started taking it as the pride issue and asked leaders not to shun the groups. Thus the fight between the two leaders has come to the extent that both leaders look like they are ready to take on their party leaders for the sake of their group.

In such a situation, as told earlier, BJP cannot neglect both the leaders as they bring a prominent number of vote bank with them. Thus the party has asked the RSS leaders to intervene and bring both the leaders back to their senses.

Currently, both leaders, instead of becoming a factor to strengthen the party, they are turning out to be a major headache.

• Yeddyurappa
• Eshwarappa
• HINDA
• Sangolli rayanna Brigade
• Karnataka BJP