Letter from Bangalore: Poojary could rock Krishna's boat

The sedate politics of Karnataka are in for a change. The Cong-ress party high command's decision to appoint Janardhan Poojary as president of the state unit has raised many eyebrows as well as levels of scepticism.

The reasons are many, but the one aspect that everyone agrees upon is that the party would be courting controversy by appointing Poojary, a man known for his strong views and even stronger likes and dislikes.

Poojary shot into fame in the late 80s as union minister of state for finance for his controversial disbursement of loans to the poor at mass rallies without collateral security, raising the hackles of the banking community as well as political adversaries both inside and outside his party.

But, courting controversies is just one aspect of the larger picture that Congressmen expect to emerge. More importantly, their worry is that the appointment would lead to groupism getting a fillip in the party-ruled state.

"Wittingly or unwittingly, the high command has sown the seeds for groupism. Not everyone of the leaders was happy with the style of functioning of Chief Minister S.M. Krishna, but there was no groupism," says a party legislator.

Leaders like C.K. Jaffer Sharief, former railway minister, S. Bangarappa, former chief minister, among others, are known to be unhappy with Krishna. But, it was difficult for them to form a group given the backing that Krishna has always got from Congress party president Sonia Gandhi.

"Given Poojary's personality, it is quite possible that all such leaders can get alienated by the new party president's actions or inactions and this could lead to formation of groups," says a former member of parliament.

"Krishna's equations may be good with Poojary, but the power equations will change. Not a good sign for the party with elections just 18 months away," a senior minister said on condition of anonymity.

Party leaders agree that Poojary would set for himself a blistering pace focusing attention on the rural sector to build the party machinery, like he had done during his earlier tenure as party president.

But, the question bothering partymen is whether he can make the party a cohesive unit bringing ministers and the alienated party worker closer, a factor that has become a major point of complaint against Krishna.

That is not the only reason for scepticism among partymen. They are also worried about the caste factor. Clearly, the party high command has decided to bestow attention on the party's vote bank of backward classes by appointing Poojary.

It is given up the practice of having both the chief minister and the party president from the upper caste groups of Vokkaligas and Lingayats, respectively. Poojary replaces Allum Veerabhadrappa, who preferred to be in the ministry, belonging to the Lingayat community.

The Lingayat community has been feeling alienated after the death of Hannur Nagappa when in captivity of India's most wanted forest bandit, Veerappan. It believes that the government did not put in as much of an effort to get him released as much as it did during the kidnapping of Kannada movie icon, Rajkumar, in July 2000.

Partymen do not have a problem in having a president from the backward classes. Their problem is that the small but powerful backward class of toddy tappers, the Idigas, to which Poojary belongs, does not create confidence among other backward classes.

"The issue is really the personality of Poojary. Maybe, he is different now," says a party leader.
As far as Krishna is concerned, he has the public assurance from Poojary that he would popularise all the good work that the chief minister has done in the last three years.

But, partymen believe that it would not take long for Poojary to create problems of some kind or the other for the government and Krishna. And, controversies are something that Krishna shuns.