The inside story: Hegde, Gowda patch up & beyond

“It happens, you know. We will be touring the state together,” said Ramakrishna Hegde with his characteristic sigh, when this reporter asked: did you have to fight like that if you had to get together again, finally?

The faction-ridden Congress had driven itself into the marsh with defeat written all over it. Master political craftsmen Hegde and H D Deve Gowda saw the opportunity and despite their epic interpersonal battle 5 years earlier, they got together assisted by their protégés Jeevaraj Alva and B L Shankar.

Their tour after Deve Gowda merged his Jayaprakash Narayan faction of the Janata Party with the Janata Dal lifted lakhs of party workers out of depression. And Deve Gowda’s only dream came true. “I will work until my body develops holes,” he told this reporter, gobbling down 17 tablets a day after becoming Karnataka’s chief minister on December 11, 1994.

He did his usual 18-hour days. If possible, he would have worked and politicked for all 24 hours. His interactions with officials were business-like. “He listens carefully to all that officials have to say. He makes suggestions. He never behaves like a know-all,” a senior bureaucrat had said then.

However, he was the expert on irrigation, besides the Krishna and Cauvery water disputes. His efforts at reviving World Bank aid to the Upper Krishna Project (UKP) to facilitate full utilization of the disputed waters before the deadline were noteworthy.

Between him and a clean and efficient officer, Dr S M Jaamdar, they increased the compensation to farmers ten times with a critical clause that they will not go to court. Not surprisingly, lawyers went on a protest.

In the one-and-a-half years of his rule, there were far-reaching developments. One such was his minister R V Deshpande leading a team to convince Japanese major Toyota-Kirloskar to set up their manufacturing unit at Bidadi and not in neighbouring Tamil Nadu.

Janata Dal won 16 of Karnataka’s 28 Lok Sabha seats in 1996. In the hung Parliament, the Communists took the strange stand that their leader, Chief Minister of West Bengal Jyoti Basu, would not become the Prime Minister. The spotlight fell on Deve Gowda to lead the United Front and a Karnataka politician became the Prime Minister of India.

A power tussle started within the Janata Dal over whose man would become the CM in Gowda’s place. Hegde-backed J H Patel won while Gowda’s protege Siddaramaiah became deputy CM.

Then Hegde raised the issue of the Janata Dal parliamentary party waiting in Karnataka Bhavan in Delhi to elect their leader, while party president Laloo Prasad Yadav unilaterally anointed Gowda as PM. Backed by S R Bommai, who developed some differences with Hegde, Gowda got Laloo to expel Hegde from the party he co-founded.

This left the state government in a bind. Ministers Deshpande and Anant Nag went to welcome and support Hegde at the Bengaluru airport. Several ministers including Ramesh Jigajinagi started dissident activity.

Deve Gowda stayed connected with ‘his’ ministers in the state government, on a daily basis. “Sorry, I couldn’t take your call. I was in class from 7.30 am,” minister K N Nage Gowda told this reporter in reference to the PM’s call. Gowda’s tenure as PM ended on April 21, 1997, when then Congress president Sitaram Kesari withdrew support to the United Front government.

Hegde launched the Rashtriya Nav Nirman Vedike with Deshpande as chairman. He toured Karnataka criticizing Gowda and faced stoning in the latter’s home district Hassan. Vedike soon became the Lok Shakti party.

When the I K Gujral-led government fell, Lok Shakti allied with the Bharatiya Janata Party for the 1998 Lok Sabha polls. Hegde’s strength lay in the Lingayat community, which supported him as he was the protege of former CM and Lingayat strongman S Nijalingappa. Hegde campaigned hard all across the state and the line to victory was his transfer of the Lingayat base to the BJP. Lok Shakti won three seats, BJP 13, Congress nine seats, Janata Dal three.

Hegde was commerce minister in the Atal Behari Vajpayee ministry which lasted a year. But H N Ananth Kumar, BJP leader and union minister, had the last word. “Hegde will be reduced to a zero after the (1998) election,” he told this reporter.

(The writer is a senior journalist based in Bengaluru)