In a significant development, months ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the BJP named Vijayendra Yediyurappa as its Karnataka state president on Friday.
Vijayendra Yediyurappa is the son of four-time Karnataka chief minister and party stalwart BS Yediyurappa.
Vijayendra’s nomination was approved by BJP national president JP Nadda, six months after the party’s loss in the Assembly polls.
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Vijayendra takes over from Dakshina Kannada MP Nalin Kumar Kateel, who was on an extension.
Vijayendra is the MLA of Shikaripura, a constituency that his father has represented eight times since 1983. Vijayendra is known for his never-say-die attitude and is known to work 24X7.
“Our goal for now is the upcoming Lok Sabha polls,” Vijayendra said. “The Lok Sabha polls are a big challenge. At a time when the world is looking at the country and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Karnataka must contribute by winning the maximum number of seats,” he said.
Vijayendra’s choice as the state BJP president was to bolster the saffron party’s chances in the LS polls and to repair the harm BJP suffered after his father Yediyurappa, the powerful Lingayat leader, resigned as chief minister of Karnataka in July 2021. Political experts in Karnataka saw this as a mistake that benefited the Congress.
By putting Vijayendra as incharge of the party, the BJP now intends to refute the claim that Yediyurappa and other Lingayat leaders were marginalised inside the party. It seems that the BJP understands the Yediyurappa father-son duo’s significance.
In 2018, Vijayendra was denied the ticket to contest from Varuna against Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s son Dr Yathindra. Since then, Vijayendra has carved a niche for himself by engineering BJP’s victories in constituencies that were believed to be impossible to win.
In Karnataka, the only southern state where the saffron party has a stronghold, 47-year-old Vijayendra is also being viewed as the face of the BJP’s emerging leadership, which the party’s top brass hopes to develop.
With his organisational skills and ingenuity, Vijayendra might provide the BJP a chance to defeat the president of the Karnataka Congress and Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar.
The BJP’s alliance with the JD(S), led by HD Deve Gowda, means that Vijayendra, as the president of the saffron party, would lead the Lingayat-Vokkaliga combination in the Lok Sabha elections against a resurgent Congress.