Bengaluru: The ruling Bharatiya Janata Celebration (BJP) has continued its patronage of the dominant Lingayats and Vokkaligas in Karnataka by allocating over 100 seats to members of the 2 communities whose assist it’s desperately looking for within the meeting elections.
Of the overall 224 seats within the meeting, 60 have been allotted to Lingayats and 43 to Vokkaligas.
After a number of rounds of deliberations, the BJP launched the names of 212 candidates and discussions are underway for the remaining 12 seats, occasion leaders advised The Print.
Though within the reserved class, 36 seats are for Scheduled Castes (SC) and 16 for Scheduled Tribes (ST), the BJP has allotted one seat every from the overall class to SC and ST candidates, thereby taking the overall to 37 and 17, respectively.
“The SC-Proper (Holeya and associated communities) have secured round 8 seats and SC-Left (Madiga and associated communities) have gotten round 9. Wherever there’s a larger inhabitants of SC-Proper, the place they’ve the power to handle election bills and have the next winnability issue, we have now given them seats. The identical precept is adopted for SC-Left too,” BJP SC Morcha state president Chalavadi Narayanaswamy advised ThePrint.
Aside from Lingayats, there are 32 candidates from the OBC (different backward courses) communities, 10 Brahmins, 2 Rajputs, 2 every from Maratha, Rajput and Jain communities and one from the Kodava group.
Though the caste groupings of at the very least 10 candidates stay unclear, this evaluation represents a majority of these whose caste identities have been confirmed by the BJP.
Extra importantly, the BJP seems to have centered on giving extra illustration to the ‘touchable’ class – Banjaras and Bhovi group– within the SC record by allocating 15 seats to them.
The Banjaras and the Bhovis had protested and pelted stones at former chief minister B.S.Yediyurappa’s workplace in Shikaripura, after their reservation was capped at 4 per cent within the inner reservation introduced by Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai final month.
Bommai had introduced inner reservation for the SC group with the Proper getting 5.5 per cent, Left 6 per cent, ‘touchables’ 4 per cent and others 1 per cent.
Political watchers say that there are round 89 communities that come below this ‘others’ class and have been denied satisfactory illustration because the bigger communities, that are ahead economically, politically and educationally, take away all the advantages meant for SCs.
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Caste and Karnataka
Of the 23 chief ministers who’ve assumed the highest chair since 1956 (submit the formation of Karnataka), a majority have been Lingayats, adopted intently by Vokkaligas because the Congress, the BJP and the Janata Dal (Secular) are identified to not stray too distant from the dominant caste politics within the state.
The BJP has had 4 chief ministers, serving truncated phrases through the complete 9 years they’ve been in energy in Karnataka and of this, solely D.V.Sadananda Gowda is a Vokkaliga. Yediyurappa, Jagadish Shettar and Bommai are all Lingayats, although not from the identical sub-sect of the group.
Within the historical past of Karnataka, since 1956, the state has had two CMs from the Brahmin group, three from backward communities like Rajput, Ediga, Kurba and Arasu, apart from Vokkaligas and Lingayats, in line with authorities knowledge that has been corroborated with specialists.
Karnataka has not had any chief minister from communities categorized as SC or ST.
To not say that members, particularly from the dominant communities inside these teams, haven’t been in positions of energy. Congress president Mallikarjuna Kharge has been the Karnataka dwelling minister, and his title is doing the rounds because the ‘subsequent CM’ if the occasion manages to safe a majority by itself within the election.
G. Parameshwara of the Congress and Govind Karjol of the BJP, each from SC communities, have served as deputy chief ministers.
Consultants say that members of the Banjara and Bhovi group are among the many greatest beneficiaries inside the SC group and cite this as the rationale for the protests towards the interior reservation.
“What’s the reservation cap on the prevailing MLAs? I’m not certain about all the state, however in Bengaluru all the set of MLAs are Bhovi and they won’t surrender this profit since all of the communities who stand to lose extra because of inner reservation are those protesting,” a Bengaluru-based political analyst mentioned mentioned.
(Edited by Geethalakshmi Ramanathan)
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