Chief ministers come and go, but the Bangalore Turf Club’s (BTF) horses will stay.
Chief ministers come and go, but the Bangalore Turf Club’s (BTF) horses will stay: That seems to be the message that a series of events have affirmed, after former chief minister BS Yeddyurappa resigned.
Soon after the chief minister’s resignation became news, horse owners, 1,500 syces and trainers at the Bangalore Turf Club performed a special puja at a temple within the Race Course.
And this, it appears, is the temple of an especially potent divine force that keeps watch over the Turf Club. At this very temple, a homa had been performed after Yeddyurappa gave the BTF an ultimatum to shift to the outskirts.
Yeddyurappa is the eighth chief minister to lose his position as head of the state government after initiating moves to get the turf club shifted. The first such instance was in 1968.
Chief Minister Virendra Patil first ordered the shift of the BTC to land identified in Jakkur. He lost power before the shift could take place. Nine years later, Chief Minister Devraj Urs also came up with a similar plan; he also wanted the club to be called the ‘Karnataka Turf Club’.
Before the plans bore fruit, Urs was dismissed by governor Govind Narain in 1978.
R Gundu Rao was the next chief minister to attempt shifting the BTF, in 1981. He wanted the land to be leased out. Gundu Rao lost the elections, and his plans were never finalised.
Ramakrishna Hegde in 1988 and SR Bommai, a year later, also lost office after initiating moves to shift the BTC. Five years later, chief minster Veerappa Moily revived the call to shift the Race Course in July 1994.
Moily was of the view that a big sporting activity should not be conducted in the heart of the city; he argued that most Race Courses across the world were located on the outskirts of the city.
With the Congress losing the elections in 1994, Moily was out of office, another victim to the ‘curse of the horses’.
In 2003, chief minister SM Krishna said it was not good that horse racing and betting should be happening within a kilometre of the Vidhana Soudha.
He promised land elsewhere for the BTC, but he too was stripped of office in the polls before he could do anything about the BTC.
In one rare instance of disregarding superstition, former chief minister BS Yeddyurappa, who had been advised that all those in power who attempted to tamper with the BTC lost power, went ahead with the move to shift the BTC.
A ruling in the high court also offered 95 acres to the BTC at Chikkajala. An 18-month deadline was set for the shift.
BTC approached the Supreme Court with a petition against the state government’s order. Even before it was admitted in court, Yeddyurappa was out of office.
With chief minister DV Sadananda Gowda in command, the club’s members now appear more relaxed about their fate. It is not clear whether Gowda will take a stance on the location of the BTC.
Only time will tell whether the Race Course in the heart of the city will continue to mark Bangalore as unique.
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