Apart from Mr Renukacharya, some of his supporters from his constituency and possibly the mathadipatis in whose name he took the oath of office as minister, no one in the BJP seems to be happy over his induction.
The dissident group, whose spokesman he was at the height of the internal squabbles between the Reddy brothers and the chief minister, seems to have lost a vociferous champion. As a leader of the ginger group which made common cause with the mining lords in their bid to rein in Yeddyurappa, Renukacharya was fairly effective. That singular quality, to be able to freely badmouth party colleagues, and the support of the caste lobby, was enough to mark him out to an extent he could only be silenced by being brought into the inner circle.
That surely did not make other legislators, who were with him till last week and were hoping for a plum office through a reshuffle, happy. Nor did it make loyalists of the party, a category somewhat different and distant from the chief minister’s own camp, happy either. They were clearly upset that the party leadership continued to yield to political blackmail. As a result, a good 20-odd legislators, some of them leading lights of the BJP, were conspicuous by their absence at the swearing-in ceremony. Since then many leaders have openly expressed their resentment, particularly over the manner in which the chief minister conveniently ignored the reputation of the legislator from Honnali; a reputation you would think twice talking about to school children.
Does it mean that the troubles of Yeddyurappa have taken a new turn with dissidents turning new loyalists and loyalists turning new dissidents? Not really. Any cabinet expansion, whether you add one minister or a dozen, leaves all those left out unhappy.
Some genuinely deserving ones and many who think they command a premium, either sulk or vent their feelings for a while after which life usually returns to normal. In that case the chief minister can hope to carry on without much of a problem unless, of course, he or his supporters mess up stuff as they seemed to do a couple of months ago.
In another sense, life for Yeddyurappa or for others in the BJP can never be normal. Even if dissidence, generally understood as a group troubling a leader, has been handled, factions now appear to be a fact of life in the ruling party. There is the lobby of the Reddy brothers and then there is the lobby of the chief minister. The third leg holding up the stool is the loyalists who will willingly put the interest of the party before that of the chief minister. Such a stool may never crash but will never be stable when two of the three legs are shaky. There or no signs of these being straightened and one gets an impression of the party being full of grumpy leaders.
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