D K Shivakumar vs Ramesh Jarkiholi: A feud to remember

Bitter political rivalry

Political feuds are not uncommon, but the bad blood between Ramesh Jarkiholi of the BJP and the Karnataka Congress president D K Shivakumar has turned into one of the most distasteful personal rivalries in Karnataka.

A glimpse of the ill will came out recently when Ramesh, on live television, repeatedly used an expletive against Shivakumar. Ramesh has levelled direct allegations against the Congress president as having engineered the sex scandal that forced him to resign from Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa’s Cabinet.

Both Ramesh and Shivakumar are career politicians. In fact, Ramesh was with the Congress for a long time before he jumped ship to the BJP in 2019. But, how did their relationship turn sour?

The first generation political families of Ramesh and Shivakumar hail from two different corners of the state: The Jarkiholi family is headquartered in Belagavi whereas Shivakumar has built his empire in Ramanagara and Bengaluru Rural districts. Members of both families are representatives in various elected bodies. Both are known to be ruthless, no-holds-barred politicians.

Apparently, Ramesh and Shivakumar had a bitter fallout over one particular relationship, followed by an innocuous Belagavi Primary Land Development Bank election in September 2018.

In this election, Congress MLA Laxmi Hebbalkar, backed by Shivakumar, succeeded in securing the victory of her supporters against those backed by the Jarkiholi brothers. This snowballed into a crisis and the Jarkiholi family - Ramesh, in particular - was in no mood to entertain Shivakumar’s alleged interference in Belagavi politics. Hebbalkar was earlier a close associate of Ramesh.

“It became a prestige issue for the Jarkiholis,” Belagavi-based political commentator Ashok Chandargi recalls.

According to Chandargi, Ramesh had vowed to avenge the slight caused by Shivakumar’s alleged interference in Belagavi politics.

In December 2018, Ramesh was dropped from the H D Kumaraswamy Cabinet. Ramesh, then, would go on to lead a rebellion against the Congress-JD(S) coalition.

What happened next was nothing short of a drama. With Shivakumar expected to helm the state Congress, Ramesh played a key role in bringing down the Kumaraswamy-led Congress-JD(S) coalition. The BJP came to power and Ramesh, now with the saffron party, demanded the Water Resources portfolio that his bete noire Shivakumar held.

“Not only did Ramesh demanded Shivakumar’s portfolio, he wanted the same office in Vidhana Soudha as that of his predecessor. Ramesh was out to prove a point, which he managed in the end,” Chandargi says.

Until that local Belagavi election, Ramesh and Shivakumar had good ties, according to one Congress leader. Ramesh’s brother Satish Jarkiholi, however, is identified as a loyalist of Congress Legislature Party leader Siddaramaiah, who is seen as having his own feud with Shivakumar.

“Their strife was a cause of concern for the Congress, and ultimately hurt the coalition government,” a Congress leader says.

Dwindling prospects?

Sources claim that it was Ramesh’s spiraling ambition that allowed the sex scandal. “It is not rocket science that the controversy could have been avoided if the right people took the right decisions before the video leaked to the media,” one person aware of the developments says.

Ramesh had burnt his bridges with both the JD(S) and Congress as he was accused of cheating the coalition. The BJP government must have had an inkling on the possible leak, but it appears to have done little to stop it, sources say.

“There were strong rumours of Ramesh cosying up with the BJP camp that was opposed to Yediyurappa amid speculation of attempts to unseat the CM,” a source said, adding that this was the reason the ‘scandal’ was allowed to happen, forcing Ramesh to pay a heavy price.