According to some media reports, Ananth Kumar convinced the central leadership that Yeddyurappa's exit will have no impact on the Lingayat votes but the elections results have proved him wrong.
Clearly, BJP has lost because of Yeddyurappa's exit and Ananth Kumar and Advani can't escape the blame for facilitating the demise of BJP's first govt down south. But why did the central leadership listen to Ananth Kumar, an arm chair politician, over Yeddyurappa, a mass base leader?
The same thing had happened in Uttar Pradesh when Kalyan Singh, a mass base leader, was removed on the insistence of Lalji Tandon and Kalraj Mishra. Kalyan Singh had successfully devised a winning social engineering formula that provided for a backward caste leader leading a coalition of both forward and backward castes. With this combination, BJP used to sweep elections in UP in 1990s.
Both Tandon and Mishra, bereft of any popular support, connived to throw Kalyan out because they had their own ambitions for CM post. Atal Behari Vajpayee listened to them as they were close to him and unfortunately he turned against Kalyan who had to finally resign.
The party sacrificed a mass based leader because a few arm chair politicians convinced Vajpayee that there will be no impact on party's electoral health after Kalyan's ouster. And both of them were proved wrong.
Today the party is nowhere in the race in UP and is vying with Congress for the third spot, after SP and BSP. Both Tandon and Mishra had played a crucial role in sealing a tie-up with BSP that paved the way for the decimation of the party in UP.
