It is rather unusual for a leader to get expelled from a party thrice. But Basanagouda Patil Yatnal, the maverick Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA from Karnataka, has accomplished just that. The 'Hindu Huli' (Hindu Tiger), as Yatnal calls himself, now finds itself in the wilderness, with Yatnal's latest rebellion, spanning a year and a half, having finally been brought to an end. Still, there is something about the leader's history that suggests that it may not be too long before Yatnal finds himself back in the BJP.
In the months leading up to his ouster, Yatnal had been the face of the rebels who publicly challenged the authority of BY Vijayendra, the state BJP president and son of veteran leader BS Yediyurappa. Yatnal and a faction in the party unit had been undermining Vijayendra ever since his appointment as the state BJP president in November 2023. This came to a head earlier this year, when the party held organisational elections in the state.
Yatnal had long been pressing for an election to the post of state president, but that remained only a remote possibility, given that Vijayendra's appointment was for a three-year term. Now, his expulsion shows that the BJP high command has thrown its weight behind the 47-year-old Vijayendra and wants him to complete his term. It also indicates that Yediyurappa will continue to call the shots in the party in Karnataka, at least for now.
A Two-Decade-Old Rivalry
The face-off between Yatnal and Vijayendra was, in fact, a proxy for the shadow-boxing going on between Yediyurappa and the BJP's national general secretary (Organisation), BL Santhosh, for years now. The Karnataka BJP is broadly divided into two camps, each owing allegiance to Yediyurappa and Santhosh, respectively.
The history of the conflict dates back to 2006, when Yediyurappa became a deputy chief minister and Santhosh was named the state general secretary, on deputation from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). While there have been many ups and downs to their rivalry since then, Yediyurappa's last term as chief minister (2019-2021) was marked by a rise in hostility, with Santhosh's protege and state BJP president Nalin Kumar Kateel undercutting him. Matters came to a head in the 2023 state election when Santhosh got the upper hand in ticket distribution, though only for his candidates to come a cropper. The party couldn't name a Leader of the Opposition (LoP) or propose Kateel's replacement for the next six months.
Since then, Yediyurappa's pre-eminent status in the state unit has been restored. Not only was Vijayendra, a first-time MLA, named state president, but R. Ashoka, who also owes allegiance to Yediyurappa, was named as the LoP, much to the chagrin of the Santhosh faction. This was followed by the denial of tickets to prominent leaders from the Santhosh camp in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. That list included Kateel, Pratap Simha and six-time MP Anant Kumar Hegde, among others.
Yatnal To The Fore
When the likes of Simha and Kateel were sidelined, it came to be wrongly attributed to the controversies they generated. The fact was that Yediyurappa was making sure that those in the Santhosh camp who took positions openly against him were deposed. With the veteran back at the steering wheel of the party in Karnataka, many in the rival camp thus chose to maintain a low profile.
And that is when Yatnal emerged as the chief provocateur. He began sniping at Vijayendra as soon as the latter was declared the party chief. Yatnal may not have come through RSS ranks, but he has emerged as a strong Hindutva face over the years with his aggressive posturing. Following his first term as MLA from 1994, Yatnal served twice as the Bijapur MP (1999-2009), a time that also saw him do a brief stint as a minister of state in the Vajpayee Cabinet (2002-2004). However, after Bijapur became a reserved constituency in 2009, Yatnal couldn't secure a BJP ticket from elsewhere. His first expulsion was soon to follow.
Thus began a short spell in the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S), before Yatnal was welcomed back to the BJP in 2013 after Yediyurappa floated the Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP). But his next expulsion came in 2015, when he contested for a place in the Legislative Council against the BJP's official nominee. In the run-up to the 2018 state election, Amit Shah intervened to bring Yatnal back into the party, but Yediyurappa couldn't accommodate him in the Cabinet, and the two fell out in its aftermath.
Lingayat Leadership
Yatnal, too, belongs to the Lingayat community, which has mostly backed the saffron party in Karnataka since Yediyurappa's emergence. Hailing from the Panchamasali sub-sect, he had even raised demands in 2023 for providing reservations to the grouping. Even so, it is Yediyurappa who is seen as a Lingayat champion as a whole, and the BJP understands this.
Now, with Vijayendra's elevation as state president, many in the Santhosh camp fear that Yediyurappa is trying to engineer a succession in the state. The clamour only intensified after the naming of district presidents, with Yatnal alleging that it was a 'KJP redux', referring to the number of Yediyurappa followers nominated to key positions. Meanwhile, the likes of MP Renukacharya, formerly the political secretary of Yediyurappa, have been projecting Vijayendra as the leader-in-waiting.
When the BJP high command effected a change of chief minister in Karnataka in 2021 at the behest of Santhosh, it had been in keeping with the party's larger goal of not being dependent solely on Yediyurappa and to promote a fresh batch of leaders to take over the mantle. Basavaraj Bommai, who replaced Yediyurappa as Chief Minister, was very much a nominee of the Lingayat strongman, but he failed to stamp his authority on the party, what with the rabble-rousers from the Santhosh camp working at cross purposes.
The loss in the 2023 state election proved to be a huge setback for Santhosh's argument. This was when the High Command realised that it could stay afloat in Karnataka only by keeping Yediyurappa in good humour, whose clout in the Lingayat community was crucial to the BJP's fortunes. Karnataka is also critical to the BJP as it is the only southern state it has ever ruled.
Moderates vs Hardliners
The Yediyurappa vs Santhosh rivalry is also a clash of ideologies between the moderates and hardline Hindutva proponents. Santhosh, hailing from coastal Karnataka, the epicentre of the clashes between the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), consolidated his power in the party apparatus when Yediyurappa was floating the KJP in 2012. Santhosh is known to have handpicked and promoted a number of ordinary workers to leadership positions over the last two decades, and most of them are bound together by a hardline approach in terms of ideology. Santhosh's vision is to carve a Hindutva base from the Lingayat and other blocs supporting the BJP in Karnataka. But beyond the coastal regions, this has proved to be difficult.
In contrast, Yediyurappa has followed a broadly inclusive approach to his politics. This was seen when KJP professed a centrist ideology rather than Hindutva. The former Chief Minister had also famously rejected the 'halal' and 'hijab' controversies as "non-consequential issues" in the run-up to the 2023 election.
Vijayendra's Future
The high command has come to reckon that it cannot deploy the Hindutva model in Karnataka as easily as it does in the Hindi heartland. Hence, the party might back Vijayendra to complete his tenure and, possibly, grant him another term to lead the party in the 2028 state election - with Yediyurappa pulling the strings from behind. But that still doesn't mean that Vijayendra will have it easy. Yatnal's expulsion surely comes as a relief to the state chief, but the leaders vocally aligned to the rival camp, such as Ramesh Jarkiholi, Arvind Limbavali and Kumar Bangarappa, are unlikely to simply fall in line.
The BJP's alliance with the JD-S would make the next state election in Karnataka a bipolar contest between the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Congress. Here, Vijayendra's future will be dependent on how well he can balance his personal ambitions and the BJP's broader interests. Yatnal may be expendable for the party at the moment, but the power tussles in the Karnataka BJP are unlikely to end anytime soon.
(Anand Kochukudy is a senior journalist and columnist)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
