42 years, 0 seats: No room for small parties

BENGALURU: In the second Lok Sabha elections in 1957, Datta Appa Katti won from Chikkodi constituency in the erstwhile state of Mysore. It was his first and last major electoral triumph; he was never elected again in or outside Karnataka. The party he was associated with, All India Scheduled Caste Federation (SCF), founded by Dr BR Ambedkar, suffered a similar fate.
Shivamurthi Swami and his party, the Lok Sewak Sangh (LSS), also tasted success for only a limited period.He won from Koppal in 1962, but he or the LSS never made any impact in Karnataka again.
The LSS and SCF are among seven political organisations which made their mark in the state between 1951 and 1977, but later disbanded, formed new outfits through mergers or simply ceded ground here to the major players — the Congress, BJP and JD.
Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party (KMPP), Praja Socialist Party (PSP), Swatantra Party, Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP) and the Bharatiya Lok Dal no longer exist. Their new avatars succeeded in staying relevant nationwide under the leadership of politicians such as JB Kripalani, Jayprakash Narayan, George Fernandes, Charan Singh and C Rajagopalachari, but they could not build a support base in Karnataka after 1977. The SCF’s present-day form, the Republic Party of India (RPI), has never won in Karnataka.
The seven organisations’ decline in the state was a significant political change considering that Swantantra Party bagged five Lok Sabha seats in 1967, the highest by any party outside of the BJP, Congress and JD. (Most of the seven merged to form the Janata Party.) Political pundit Sandeep Shastry attributed the decline to voters’ tendency to choose from only two big national players.
“If you look at the electorate in Karnataka, people have never favoured a third force. The third force has always been distant from the rivalry of two major parties. You can see this in past battles. After 1983, the Congress and Janata Party were the main rivals, while the BJP was relegated to number 3. In recent years, it has been a fight between the Congress and BJP. The JD(S) is the distant third,” he said. “Two relevant national forces squeeze out the third entity in the state.”
Another political analyst, Harish Ramaswamy, said in the current political climate, only Mayawati’s BSP can challenge the BJP and Congress-JD(S). “It has identified itself with a particular caste and community, which gives it an edge over any other entrant in Karnataka politics,” he said.