‘Nobody will trade minister’s post for party post. The power of a minister to dispense favour and amass wealth is immense’

PRITHVIRAJ CHAVAN: For me, the Karnataka elections were a great experience. The average MP, particularly a Lok Sabha one, usually has a narrow vision — you do not see anything beyond your own constituency because it does not bring you any political dividend.

The election result did not meet our expectations. We expected to be the largest single party, if not win the absolute majority. I did not realise that Karnataka was so caste-ridden and communally divided. It surprised me to learn about all the castes and sub-castes and that we must provide tickets for all the sub-castes. Everybody had to be appeased.

There’s another thing I learnt: people say elections in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra are expensive, but nothing prepared us for what we saw in Karnataka. Here, money really mattered and it produced results.

•VANDITA MISHRA: Congress is one of the oldest players in Karnataka politics and has played the caste game all these years. So why do you say you were surprised by the caste divisions?

What surprised me and other Congress leaders who had come from outside the state was the intensity of caste feelings. Not only the castes but the sub-sub-castes. For example there are 27 sub-castes of Lingayats, four or five of Vokkaliggas. So what happened in the ticket distribution is that in order to balance this caste ratio, merit suffered. If you set a quota for a certain community then you had to meet the number even if there was a better candidate from another community.

•SUMAN K. JHA: The Congress party’s post-mortem of Gujarat found that inducting rebels did not help the party and that not projecting a candidate as chief minister was a big mistake. Do you think, the Congress committed the same mistakes in Karnataka?

In Gujarat, we specifically tried woo BJP rebels, with the understanding that we would try to break into the Patel community which is supposedly a BJP stronghold. We had nothing to lose if we gave seats to those who migrated to us because the seats were not ours in the first place. It didn’t work out. We learned from the experience and made a point not to touch any BJP rebel in Karnataka — except for one MLA.

•SUMAN K. JHA: What about not projecting a CM candidate?

The Congress does not project a leader — particularly when it is in opposition. We did not do it for Gujarat either. Karnataka was an important election. We had to put everything that we had, all our assets and leaders had to be in fray. That brings us to S.M. Krishna. He was keen to return to active politics. A very calculated decision was taken to use Mr Krishna in the campaign with the understanding that he would not contest the elections. We made him chairman of the election monitoring and coordination committee, based in Bangalore.

... contd.

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