Collective or individual leadership debate could sink BJP

Bangalore: The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Karnataka is fast becoming a political lesson on how to lose in a few years what one gains after decades. The art of scoring self goals is over which kind of leadership is a winner - collective or individual.

The party has just over a year before it goes to the people to seek a fresh mandate. Elections to the 225-member assembly, that includes one nominated member, are due in April-May 2013.

Indications are the party will spend most of this time bickering over leadership rather than undoing the damage the series of scandals have done to its image since it came to power for the first time in Karnataka in May 2008.

With the BJP central leadership busy taking on the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government over various scams, it has almost become a free for all in the party's Karnataka unit.

This was evident Friday when Chief Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda was meeting party chief Nitin Gadkari and senior leaders such as L.K. Advani in New Delhi to brief them on the Karnataka situation.

Back in Karnataka, Gowda's predecessor B.S. Yeddyurappa was holding forth on the meaninglessness of collective leadership, which the party's central leaders are advocating to hold the deeply divided state unit together.

He was also not sure whether Gowda, whom he had chosen to succeed him, will remain in office for the next 15 months!

'The party high command will decide on it,' Yeddyurappa told reporters in Davangere in central Karnataka.

Gowda, who took over Aug 4 after Yeddyurappa was forced to quit over corruption charges July 31, is playing safe.

'I will go by the decision of the high command,' he said Saturday on his return from New Delhi.

On the collective versus individual leadership debate in the party's state unit also, Gowda did not want to take any stand.

'It is not good on the part of a chief minister to talk on issues which are best decided by the party leaders,' he said.

Ever since Yeddyurappa, the party's first chief minister in Karnataka and southern India, was forced out of office, the BJP state unit is caught in the collective versus individual leadership battle.

Though he is out of jail on bail in two corruption cases and has secured anticipatory bail in four more corruption cases, Yeddyurappa has not reconciled to losing the chief minister's post. He was in New Delhi early this month lobbying in vain to be reinstated in the post.

Since central leaders reportedly told him that he can only get back to the post once he is cleared of all charges, Yeddyurappa is smarting and his supporters have upped the ante for officially declaring him as the sole leader of the state unit.

Yeddyurappa is also keeping his supporters' morale up, claiming that the party high command has agreed to his view that collective leadership means multiple problems and the next assembly elections should be fought under a single leader, that is him.

The high command will announce a leader under whose leadership the party will face the next general elections, he claimed Saturday in Davangere.

The weakness of the Congress and the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) in the state has only come as a boon to Yeddyurappa and his supporters to continue the battle for supremacy within the state unit.

Congress hopes of cashing in on the divisions in the BJP to defeat Gowda in the Dec 22 bypoll to the legislative council came a cropper as the JD-S abstained from voting.

Gowda, a Lok Sabha member, had to become a member of the assembly or legislative council within six months of assuming the chief minister's post.

With no strong opposition and BJP central leaders busy in national affairs, it will be a miracle if the party in Karnataka stops bickering over the leadership issue and focusses its remaining term in office on governance.