The 92-year-old former prime minister HD Deve Gowda took part in a roadshow in his hometown Hassan seeking votes for his grandson MP Prajwal Revanna on Saturday. It was sweltering heat, but that did not deter the former PM from venturing out, because this election is too important for him and he can’t afford to take any chances.
His fiercest enemy in local politics the late G Puttaswamy Gowda has once again returned to haunt the Deve Gowda clan in Hassan, triggering panic in the Janata Dal (Secular) camp. The Congress has fielded Puttaswamy Gowda’s grandson Shreyas Patel in Hassan hoping to end the free run of the Deve Gowdas there.
The enmity between HD Deve Gowda and Puttaswamy Gowda is legendary as they fought against each other for decades, winning some and losing some in the past.
The old generation of enmity has now passed onto the third generation, making it the oldest and fiercest battle in Karnataka politics.
Both the warring Gowdas were once close friends, later turned bitter enemies in the early 1980s vowing to destroy each other. In the 1989 assembly elections, Deve Gowda suffered his first electoral defeat at the hands of Puttaswamy Gowda. The victorious Gowda went on to become a prominent cabinet minister in the Karnataka government. In 1994, Deve Gowda’s son HD Revanna defeated Puttaswamy Gowda in his maiden assembly election. Deve Gowda became the chief minister and also Prime Minister.
A defeated and wounded Puttaswamy Gowda had to go through a lot of hard times during those five years.
But, in the 1999 parliamentary elections, Puttaswamy Gowda defeated the former Prime Minister by a huge margin. In that election, the Deve Gowda family was decimated, losing all the seats it contested.
In the 2004 general elections, HD Deve Gowda returned to Hassan and defeated Puttaswamy Gowda. Two years later, Puttaswamy Gowda died of multiple organ failure. Everyone thought that the enmity would end there as his only son had predeceased him.
But it did not. In the 2008 and 2013 assembly elections, his daughter-in-law Anupama unsuccessfully fought against HD Revanna on a Congress ticket in Holenarasipura. She kept the family enmity flag flying high, refusing to shake hands with the Deve Gowda clan.
In the last assembly election, her young son in his 20s, Shreyas Patel, took on HD Revanna and lost by just two thousand votes in Holenarasipura. He is now facing Revanna’s son Prajwal in one of the most-watched elections in Karnataka. According to some locals, people are placing bets worth several lakhs on this election.
Prajwal is facing anti-incumbency and former BJP MLA from Hassan Preetham Gowda is maintaining a distance from him in the campaign. In Hassan, the Bharatiya Janata Party is a distant third and has extended support to the JD(S), its minor partner in the state in this election.
According to a coffee planter from Sakleshpura town in the district, the Lingayats, who are the main vote bank of the BJP, are not happy with Prajwal and they have been traditional supporters of Puttaswamy Gowda and might even back him.
Though chief minister Siddaramaiah maintains a good relationship with Revanna, state Congress president DK Shivakumar wants to decimate the Gowdas on their home turf. Siddaramaiah has bigger issues with HD Kumaraswamy and Deve Gowda. They have given clear instructions to the district Congress to defeat Prajwal at any cost.
Alarmed by these developments, an old and ill Deve Gowda has been making emotional appeals to the voters to help his family one last time, claiming he would not be alive for the next election.
Shreyas’s mother Anupama and Prajwal’s mother Bhavani are also vigorously campaigning for their son, making the election most colourful and high decibel.
So who will win the Hassan cliffhanger? Irrespective of the outcome, the enmity will continue for a long time, locals say.
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