Shimoga (Karnataka), April 17: Mud is flying thick and fast in the Bangarappa vs Bangarappa contest on the family’s homeground, Sorab. But the attack is one-sided.
Former chief minister S. Bangarappa — the unchallenged king of Sorab who has, over the years, extended his writ across all of Shimoga district in central Karnataka — has launched a no-holds-barred tirade against elder son Kumar, calling him “corrupt” and “nalayak”.
Kumar, who followed the 72-year-old into the BJP six weeks ago but made a quick return to the Congress after finding that his father had passed him over to give the Sorab Assembly ticket to younger son Madhu, is keeping quiet.
“I did not expect this from my father,” he says. But rather than make a counter-attack that would offend the family’s loyalists, he is urging voters to elect him to the Assembly and “Dodda sahib” (Bangarappa) to Parliament. Bangarappa is the BJP’s nominee for the Shimoga Lok Sabha seat, which he held in the 13th Lok Sabha.
Bangarappa has never lost his hold over the seat since he first won it in 1967 as a Praja Socialist Party candidate. The former Congress stalwart won for seven consecutive terms before vacating the seat for Kumar in 1996 when he got elected to the Lok Sabha.
This time, however, the son has thrown a challenge to the father. Bangarappa is finding that loyalists have already accepted Kumar as his political successor. The youths, in particular, are vocal about their support for Kumar, himself in his early 40s.
Sensing danger, the former chief minister has gone all out.
“Kumar is corrupt and nalayak; he has cheated his mother, father and brother,” Bangarappa said as he toured Sorab with Madhu on a mohallah-to-mohallah campaign. “Look at the tank. The government had sanctioned Rs 7.5 lakh for its desiltation. Kumar, as in-charge of the government’s drought relief programme, has spent only Rs 50,000 and pocketed the rest.”
That’s not all. Bangarappa claims the son duped his “illiterate mother” by getting “her signature for selling family property in Bangalore”. Wife Shakunthala and three daughters Kavitha, Geetha and Anitha are backing him.
With the entire family against him, Kumar will have a lot of mud to duck.
