Mangaluru: Sirsi and Puttur have a story to tell: Bheemanna and Putthila two of a kind

Mangaluru/Karwar : The 2023 Karnataka assembly elections have thrown out new things. Polarisation in the first kind and depolarisation is a second kind. Two constituencies Sirsi in Uttara Kannada and Puttur in Dakshina Kannada are two of a kind.

Call it the Congress Tsunami or the perceptive voters of Karnataka, both ways it was a new trend. In Puttur, the maverick candidate of the Hindutva base-Arun Puthila had defied the Sangh Parivar and had contested as an independent candidate in Puttur which is a highly polarised constituency towards Hindutva. It is not that the Puttur constituency did not waver from its Hindutva agenda, now and then there were flashes of Congress supremacy, Puthila wanted to break that and contest here purely on the Hindutva plank. He took on the Hindutva activists who were not working inside the BJP ecosystem.

“I did not want to rely on Hindutva votes that are entrapped into a particular political ecosystem but rely on the true tenets of Hindutva or Hinduism whatever you prefer to call it. It is also another matter that I was heavily supported by the OBCs, Micro OBCs, Upper caste Hindus and to some extent even Christians and Muslims who trusted their Hindu fraternity”.

When analysing the results of that Asha Thimmappa Gowda the official candidate of BJP with that of Arun Puthila the lead was more than 20,000 votes in favour of Arun Puthila. The winning margin of the Congress candidate Ashok Rai who joined Congress from BJP just 4 months back against Puthila was just 5000 votes this is the first time in the history of the Puttur constituency that a major political party (BJP) has been pushed to the third position and almost gave Congress jitters of losing.

In another constituency at least 350 kilometres from Puttur, at Sirsi Bheemanna Naik, a tall Eediga leader also broke the traditional Congress BJP votes from Havyaka Brahmins and defeated the 8-time winner and speaker of the legislative assembly of Karnataka, -Vishveshwar Hegade Kageri.

The Sirsi-Siddapur Constituency, which was a stronghold of the BJP for 25 years, was won by Bheemanna Naik of Congress with a decent margin of 5800 votes.In Sirisi-Siddapur Constituency, the votes of Havyaka Brahmins and Namdharis are crucial for victory. Swajati chauvinists and BJP fan names stood in support of Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri. Kageri also thought that this would help in his victory. But the result is surprising. Bhimanna Naik, who contested from the Congress in the last assembly election and lost by a margin of 17 thousand votes, has registered a victory against the BJP this time. Not only did the Namdhari Eedigas voted heavily for the Congress candidate but also influenced Brahmins to vote for Bheemanna Naik. Here also all the caste and political affiliations have been broken the political pundits say. (eom)