The price of losing Lingayat support: BJP's heavy toll in Karnataka

It all started with the stepping down of prominent Lingayat leader BS Yediyurappa as the Chief Minister and fuelled by the refusal of tickets to others lingayat leaders--Jagdish Shettar and Laxman Savad, all belonging to the powerful community.

According to media reports, the Lingayat support can affect at least 85 seats in the 224-seat assembly.

With 136 seats, comfortably over 113 needed to form the government, Congress raised its tally by 55 seats, while BJP with 65 seats lost 39 seats in the 2023 elections in the southern state.

Lingayats, who are traditionally Congress supporters, shifted their loyalty to the BJP in the 80s when Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi suddenly removed Lingayat Chief Minister Veerendra Patil. This helped the BJP to make inroads into the Karnataka.

Media reports said that top Congress leaders had noted that the Lingayat community was extremely disappointed when Yediyurappa was forced to resign in July 2021 during his fourth term due to a series of corruption allegations against him. Being the most prominent leader of the community, his departure from office was perceived as a major show of disrespect by the party.

A gathering of 500 influential Lingayat sadhus had assembled to stage a protest, and one among them had cautioned that the consequences would be "irreversible."

Meanwhile, 67-year-old Lingayat leader Jagdish Shettar also claimed that his exit from BJP will cost BJP 23-25 seats as he resigned from the primary membership of the BJP after he was denied a ticket to contest in the Karnataka assembly election from the Hubli-Dharwad (Central) constituency, which he had represented in the previous Assembly.

Reports said that a sadhu from the community even said that even the mutts are having to pay a 30 percent commission to the government, highlighting the BJP’s diminishing support among the community.

The resentment ran so deep that additional provisions for job and education reservations were insufficient to alleviate it.

In March, the ruling BJP eliminated the four percent reservation for Muslims under the Other Backward Classes category and redistributed it among the Lingayats, Vokkaligas, Scheduled Castes, and Scheduled Tribes. The Lingayat community received the largest portion, amounting to 7 percent, in an attempt to regain their support.