By Fakir Balaji

Bengaluru, Apr 10 (IANS): The Janata Dal-Secular (JD(S))-Congress ruling coalition in Karnataka faces a catch-22 situation as the cadres of the two parties are refusing to campaign for each other's candidates, given their historic rivalry of over three decades.

The JD(S), which heads the government despite lesser seats (37) in the Assembly than its ally the Congress (80), is pulling all stops to at least double its strength in the Lok Sabha elections from 2 to 4 MPs, if not more, to gain some elbow room in the state, party insiders say.

But all efforts are likely to come to a naught in the absence of support from the cadres. "While the leaders of the two parties agreed to jointly contest, there is no bonhomie between cadres for a joint campaign given their bitter feud over the years," observed a political analyst.

Under the seat-sharing arrangement arrived at after much wrangling and shadow-boxing, the Congress is contesting 21 seats, though it won only 9 in the 2014 elections against 17 by the BJP.

"As we are sharing power in the state, a pre-poll alliance to jointly contest the Lok Sabha polls will prevent division of votes in a straight fight with the BJP, unlike in a triangular contest that benefits our rival party (BJP)," JD(S) spokesman Ramesh Babu told IANS.

Though H D Deve Gowda initially bargained hard with Congress President Rahul Gandhi for 12 seats, he reconciled to contest 7 seats after giving up the eighth seat (Bangalore North) to the Congress for want of a winnable candidate against BJP's sitting member and Union Minister D V Sadananda Gowda.

Of the 7 seats, the JD(S) is contesting four -- Hassan, Mandya, Tumkur and Udupi-Chikamangalur -- going to polls on April 18 in the central and southern regions and three -- Bijapur (Vijayapura), Shimoga and Uttara Kannada -- going to vote on April 23 in the coastal and northern regions.

To retain its bastions, Hassan and Mandya, in the old Mysuru region, the party has fielded Deve Gowda's two grandsons -- Prajwal and Nikhil. Prajwal is son of Gowda's second son and state PWD minister H.D. Revanna, and Nikhil is son of Gowda's third son and Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy.

Deve Gowda himself is contesting from Tumakuru, and not his old constituency Hassan, from where he won for record six times since 1991.

While Prajwal is expected to sail through from the Gowda family turf of Hassan, his cousin Nikhil is facing a tough fight from multilingual actress Sumalatha Ambareesh, an Independent being supported by the BJP.

The saffron party has stayed away from a direct fight in these elections, owning to its weak presence in the region.

Though 29-year-old Nikhil is betting on the support of his politically-dominant Vokkaliga community and the party's legislators who won from all the eight Assembly segments in the constituency in the May 2018 elections, 55-year-old Sumalatha is no pushover either.

She is betting on the popularity of her late husband and rebel Kannada star M H Ambareesh, a Mandya native, who won the seat thrice, twice on Congress and once on JD(S) ticket.

Ambareesh, a legislator from the Mandya Assembly seat and a minister in the Congress government (2013-2016), died on November 24, 2018 in Bengaluru at the age of 66, generating a massive sympathy wave for Sumalatha from his legion of fans.

As Ambareesh was also a Vokkaliga as well as a Gowda, it's a Hobson's choice for the Mandya electorate, dominated by Gowdas, farmers and minorities to choose between Sumalatha and Nikhil, an upcoming Kannada film star.

Though the alliance partners have agreed to campaign together for joint candidates in all 28 seats, the district Congress leaders and cadres in Mandya, however, refused to join their JD(S) counterparts to seek votes for Nikhil due to simmering discontent.

The rivalry between the two parties is so intense that even in Hassan, Congress members are not campaigning for Prajwal who faces A. Manju, a former Congress Minister who joined the BJP recently.

In retaliation, the JD(S) workers have refused to campaign for Congress candidate C H Vijayashankar in Mysore against BJP's sitting member Pratap Simha.

Similarly, Congress cadres are reluctant to campaign for Deve Gowda, as their outgoing member S P Muddhanumegowda was denied ticket and forced to withdraw nomination as a rebel candidate. In Udupi-Chikmagalur too, Congress cadres are not campaigning for JD(S) candidate Pramod Madwaraj against sitting BJP member Shobha Karandlaje.

(Fakir Balaji can be reached at fakir.b@isns.in)