To win by any means
Source: By Harish Ramaswamy: Deccan Herald
Every election year, it is commonplace for candidates to try to move from their original constituencies to new ones or to contest from two or more constituencies to safeguard their position. Sonia Gandhi and Sushma Swaraj contesting from Bellary (1999), Narendra Modi from Varanasi and Vadodara (2014), Indira Gandhi from Medak and Rae Bareli (1980) are not new. Candidates in all these cases are by law supposed to vacate one of the seats in case they win both. Similarly, Rajya Sabha MPs being nominated from states other than the one they hail from is also now common. P Chidambaram (Maharashtra), Nirmala Sitharaman (Karnataka) and Arun Jaitley (Gujarat) are cases that show that for political parties, winnability is more important than true representation in our democracy.
There was a PIL in the Supreme Court challenging the constitutional validity of the provisions that allow for contesting multiple seats in 2015. Earlier to that, the Election Commission had in 2010 proposed a change in the law to limit the number of seats to one per candidate. The proposal was not cleared by the federal government. Nevertheless, the opinion on this issue is clearly divided. Some academics believe that contesting in multiple constituencies supports in voter mobilisation, while others believe that it hurts the state’s exchequer since this would call for by-elections.
For leaders who have tried this to script their return to active politics or to safeguard their political future when their leadership is challenged from both within and without, their concern for their constituency or the question of representation is a travesty. This phenomenon in Karnataka politics brought it the reputation of being a safe haven for Congress at one time. This time around, the context is different with the BJP state president B S Yeddyurappa likely being directed by his leaders to contest from North Karnataka. There may be many reasons for this: the Lingayat-Veerashaiva predicament, an unresolved issue, has all the potential to dig holes in the so-called majority community (Lingayats are 17% of the population) vote in the region. An idea, floated by the Congress perhaps to woo divided votes, to give the community a minority/OBC tag seems even more potent. Yeddyurappa, so far projected as the unquestionable leader of his community, may be reduced to a minority leader status. Worse, these developments could culminate in a clear division of the community.
His shrinking popularity in the state, in party circles and in Shimoga, though not so much in his own constituency of Shikaripura, after the Rayanna brigade was invented to project K S Eshwarappa as the leader of the backward communities; the foiled bike rally in the coastal region, and the conspicuous absence of the BJP president in the rally; the Gauri Lankesh murder — in all likelihood by bigots — and the protests surrounding it; the threats to free speech and its votaries — seen as the retreat of a progressive society — have all changed the political dynamics in the state and have impacted the reputations of the top state leaders of the major political parties.
But the BJP well remembers that when Yeddyurappa went out of the party and formed the KJP after being forced to resign over the mining bribery charges, the BJP’s tally came down from 110 in the 2008 elections to just 40 in the 2013 polls. Although the KJP itself won only six seats, the BJP acknowledged that Yeddyurappa had damaged its seat tally — the KJP finished second in 36 constituencies, third in 35 constituencies and secured an impressive 30.68 lakh votes (9.83% of the total). In Shimoga, for instance, the winning Congress candidate secured 39,355 votes, the KJP 39,077 and BJP 33,462 votes.
Indeed, nearly 20 years before that, in 1994, Yeddyurappa had played an important role when the BJP won five seats in the Bombay-Karnataka region, a Lingayat stronghold, for the first time. The party had managed to hold sway in the region ever since until 2013. This, in fact, seems to have come back to haunt him now, having been given the responsibility to bring in the Lingayat vote once again in all of North Karnataka, albeit in a very different political scenario, since the party that wins the maximum number of seats in North Karnataka will almost surely get to rule the state.
Deep-rooted ties
While mindful of these political developments, it is important to ask if candidates’ constituency-hopping is in the good spirit of democracy. There has been some research on this phenomenon in more mature democracies like Britain. These studies have found that voters choose or prefer candidates with deep local roots in constituencies and those who have a longstanding relationship with the constituency since they see it as a question of the very idea of representation and the responsibilities of government.
Empirical evidence in these studies has also shown that those with deep connection with their constituencies are more likely to win elections than those that have hopped in from another constituency. In other words, the local candidate shows greater winnability than the migrant candidate, and this also legitimises the former’s claim to represent the constituency. Of course, today there is the X-factor in the form of social media, which seems to have the power to decide whether migrant candidates succeed or fail at the hustings.
Yeddyurappa’s shift to a constituency in North Karnataka, therefore, may or may not yield the result his party hopes for. Nonetheless, in the Indian context, it only shows the nervousness of a candidate or a party about his prospects in the current constituency, rather than a sound political strategy. Subhash C Kashyap, a former secretary-general of the Lok Sabha and an honorary research professor at the Centre for Policy Research in Delhi, feels that constituency-hopping allows politicians to misuse the electoral system. But perhaps, as Mark Twain said, “if voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it”.
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