The son doesn’t set on Karnataka’s prodigal son.

Sarekoppa Bangarappa, the eternal rebel who has changed parties more often than anyone would care to remember, is back in the Congress for the fourth time, defending his home turf of Shimoga, the central Karnataka district around 300km from Bangalore.

The 75-year-old former chief minister — he held the post between 1990 and 1992 — has made peace with elder son Kumar, a film actor, with whom he had a bitter war of words during the 2004 elections.

The father had then contested on a BJP ticket, Kumar had followed him out of the Congress but quickly returned after finding his younger brother Madhu being favoured for an Assembly nomination.

Much water has since flown down the Tunga, on whose banks the picturesque district rests. The senior Bangarappa’s romance with the BJP lasted for a year. He felt sidelined in the party, resigned his Lok Sabha seat and walked over to the Samajwadi Party. In 2005, he won the byelection, but with a lesser margin. Now he is back in the Congress and re-united with his son.

But the veteran leader is battling another son. The BJP, opponents of dynasty rule, has fielded B.Y. Raghavendra, the son of chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, whose Assembly constituency of Shikaripura falls within the Shimoga Lok Sabha seat.

The warhorse, however, dismisses any talk of challenge from the 36-year-old political greenhorn.

“Tackling him? I’m tackling the BJP, not the candidate,” scoffs Bangarappa, campaigning in his family borough of Sorab, an agricultural taluk some 80km northwest of Shimoga town. “Any candidate, I don’t bother.”

His supporters seem to agree with him, as they wait patiently in the scorching sun in the remote hamlet of Udri for their leader to turn up, entertained by a group of drummers performing dollu kunitha, a folk dance, on the road, their colourful tassels and beads swinging wildly.

Under the shamiana, some Sthree Shakti (a women’s group) volunteers had occupied their seats, all turned out impeccably unlike the scruffy men. “He will win, he takes care of us,” says Prasanna, an elderly man waiting at the back of the gathering to catch a glimpse of Bangarappa.

Nestled in the Western Ghats and its foothills in a region called Malnad, Shimoga is at the heart of Karnataka’s literary tradition and culture. Home to India’s highest waterfall — the 1,493ft Kunchikal Falls — and the better known Jog Falls, the district has produced three chief ministers, J.H. Patel being the third.

Bangarappa turns up finally, preceded by his long-haired sons, Kumar and Madhu, a film producer.

It’s the first time in years the three are being seen together. Kumar had become an outcast in 2004 for sticking to the Congress. Last year, the brothers contested against each other in the Sorab Assembly seat as Congress and Samajwadi Party candidates and lost to the BJP.

“We stand united today because of you,” Kumar tells the gathering.

Elsewhere in Shimoga, Yeddyurappa is rolling out his list of achievements to a much larger crowd, after he has finished welcoming several gram panchayat and taluk-level politicians into the BJP from rival parties. Raghavendra, too, is present, but Yeddyurappa does not mention him or any other BJP candidate.

“He is young and has a good name,” an elderly man says of Raghavendra as he walks away from the election rally at Anveri, some 30km southeast of Shimoga. “Bangarappa is growing old, and is not well,” the man adds.

It’s this kind of whisper campaign by the BJP that’s hurting Bangarappa, fumes Congress leader Shivalingaiah Murthy. “They say he’s suffering from kidney failure... that he has broken a leg.”

But Bangarappa, who still plays badminton, his favourite sport, is clear about what he’s fighting.

“This is my sixth (Lok Sabha) election. Development is the main cause... development versus the illegal things adopted by Yeddyurappa... he’s spending money like water,” says Bangarappa, whom Sorab elected to the Assembly without a break between 1967 and 1996 and who has won the Shimoga Lok Sabha seat four times.

Last year, he took on Yeddyurappa in the latter’s stronghold of Shikaripura but lost, although the Congress and Janata Dal (S) withdrew candidates in his support.

The BJP’s attempts at development are hard to miss in Shimoga where the once narrow roads are all being dug up for widening. “We can work better if the MP, MLA and taluk panchayat members are all from the same party,” says Yeddyurappa as he exhorts the people to elect his party.

The BJP has the upper hand in that it holds five of the seven Assembly seats that make up the Shimoga parliamentary constituency, but to win, Raghavendra would need all the support he can get.

For one, the Congress is making much of the fact that Yeddyurappa had initially denied that his son was the BJP’s candidate to brush aside allegations of dynasty rule.

“He has every right to make his son stand and win, but why swear on God,” says Kumar Bangarappa.

Shimoga votes on April 30