Few leaders in Karnataka can draw crowds purely on the basis of being stand out entertainers. While most political leaders tend to fall in the category of the dry and the drab, these leaders have the ability to deliver humour-laced rhetoric that cuts across the political spectrum.
BJP MLA from Bijapur City, Basanagouda Patil Yatnal, who was detained by the police during Panchamasali Lingayats’ protest in Belagavi on Wednesday, falls squarely in the latter category.
Over the past few years, Yatnal has been at the forefront of the Panchamasali Lingayat movement for 15% reservation under 2A category. Currently, this sub-sect of the Lingayat community is getting a 5% quota under the 3B category.
Yatnal, 60, is considered the uncrowned king of political rhetoric in Karnataka’s northern districts, where the dialect of Kannada and nuances of life and political humour differ from the southern parts.
His ability to tell it like it is, to deliver unbridled political jibes at rivals, to keep BJP supporters in splits, and hit the right notes of Hindutva, have made Yatnal a key weapon in the Karnataka BJP’s arsenal.
Yatnal, who was in Delhi earlier this month to meet the party’s central leaders, has repeatedly called for B Y Vijayendra’s removal as the state BJP chief and was recently issued a show-cause notice by the party for parallelly holding a protest against the Waqf Board and his criticism of former CM and Vijayendra’s father B S Yediyurappa, urging the party to come out of the “family’s grip”.
Yatnal had been served two notices by the state BJP’s disciplinary committee in the past for his remarks on Yediyurappa and another ex-CM Basavaraj Bommai, with his tirades only intensifying since Vijayendra’s appointment as the state party chief last year. Soon after Vijayendra’s elevation, Yatnal accused Yediyurappa of “blackmailing” the party’s central leadership to secure the post for his son, a first-time MLA from Shikaripura.
A two-time BJP Lok Sabha MP, Yatnal was also a Minister of State in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government between 2002 and 2004.
It is no small wonder then that while the BJP has threatened disciplinary action against Yatnal for tirades against the state BJP leadership as well the Yediruappa clan, it had also approached him to be one of the party’s star campaigners in the 2023 state polls.
In 2010, Yatnal was considered down and out in the BJP when he quit the party to join the JD(S), miffed at not being made a minister in the first BJP government in Karnataka under Yediyurappa.
He rejoined the party in 2013 but was expelled in 2015 for anti-party activities. He went on to emerge as a prominent face in the BJP from 2018, when he was taken back into the party fold by Yediyurappa.
A maverick politician, whom party insiders consider “indisciplined” to hold high offices, Yatnal does not have roots in the Sangh Parivar, unlike his counterparts.
Identified first as a bright prospect in the 1990s by BJP leader and former Union minister H N Ananth Kumar, who died in 2018, Yatnal was considered a member of the Ananth Kumar camp, which had been squaring off with the rival Yediyurappa camp for decades. For this reason, perhaps, Yatnal had then got more opportunities as a leader in central politics rather than in Karnataka BJP that has been primarily controlled by Yediyurappa.
Attacks by Yatnal on the state BJP, including comments on Yediyurappa and his son Vijayendra and party leaders considered to be in the Yediyurappa camp, have given credence to the theory that Yatnal has been licensed in the BJP to shoot from the lip.
Yatnal’s influence is also illustrated in his statement from October 2020, when he was one of the first to signal the possible exit of Yediyurappa as CM. “He will not continue for long. The people on top are fed up,” Yatnal said at a rally then. “Even the BJP leadership has realised that north Karnataka contributes the maximum seats to the BJP. They want to make someone from north Karnataka the CM,” he added.
The controversy surrounding Yatnal in the past had involved his accusations on BJP leaders of allegedly using blackmail tactics and money to obtain their posts in the Yediyurappa-led dispensation.
In 2021, he said, “If I was interested in CD politics (blackmail) I could have become a deputy CM anytime. Some people went to Delhi and said they will give Rs 2000 crore (to be made minister). Our party is not like that. Our party is for all – they have made OBC, SC/ST, and women ministers recently.”
The MLA was among the state BJP leaders who, in 2021, objected to Yediyurappa’s move to hand over nearly 3000 acres of mining land to JSW Steel group at a low cost.
“We are against the state government’s decision to sell land worth crores to JSW for just 1.25 lakh per acre. We wrote a letter against the decision taken by Yeddyurappa to party president J P Nadda. In the backdrop of the intervention of our party high command, the decision to give land to the company has been withdrawn,” he said in May 2021.
In 2020, when astrologer Yuvaraj, who boasted of high political connections to allegedly cheat several people of crores of rupees was arrested, Yatnal highlighted wrongdoing in the BJP. “Yuvaraj has been arrested because he was involved in illegal work. A lot of politicians have paid him crores. Many have paid him saying they want to become an MP, a Rajya Sabha member, a minister.”
When his name was mentioned in 2021 as a possible CM candidate when Yediyurappa was being replaced with Basavaraj Bommai as the CM, Yatnal had dismissed his candidature. “I am not in any race. The PM will pick a leader who is honest, pro-Hindutva, and capable of bringing the party to power in the next elections as the chief minister,” he had said.
Along the way, Yatnal became a poster boy of hard-line Hindutva politics in the state.
He had also stirred controversy in 2018 by telling councillors in Bijapur to only serve Hindus in the constituency since “they had voted for him and not Muslims”.
A few years ago, he called veteran freedom fighter H S Doreswamy a “fake freedom fighter” and a “Pakistani agent” for taking up liberal causes. Yatnal had also been arrested in the past for allegedly stirring communal trouble in the Bijapur region.
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