By P.T. Bopanna
The late firebrand Karnataka politician A.K. Subbaiah and his politician son A.S. Ponnanna are like chalk and cheese when it comes to politics.
While Subbaiah was more of a rabble-rouser, his son Ponnanna, sitting Congress MLA from Virajpet in Kodagu (Coorg) district, is more cerebral (shrewd).
If only Subbaiah was a bit shrewd, he would have ended up as king, rather than a king-maker.
Subbaiah was elected the first president of the BJP in 1980. With his powerful oratory and support from party cadres, he was able to win 18 seats in the Assembly elections in 1983. Janata Party leader Ramakrishna Hegde was short of majority and took the help of the BJP to form the government.
Because of Subbaiah’s king-sized ego, chief minister Hegde found it difficult to run the coalition government. The wily Hegde, the second Brahmin chief minister of Karnataka, slowly wooed the BJP MLAs (the rumour then was unethical methods were used), who were basically from Dakshina Kannada district.
Some of his party MLAs turned against Subbaiah who was eventually expelled by the BJP.
If only Subbaiah was shrewd, he could have gained political power and ended up as one of the powerful political forces in Karnataka.
Unlike Subbaiah, son Ponnanna is known for making shrewd political moves to grab power.
While Subbaiah was MLC four times, he was not able to get elected as MLA. Ponnanna is not rash like his father. Because of his shrewdness and strategy, he was able to wrest the Virajpet seat, which was a stronghold of the BJP for decades.
Ponnanna plays politics like a chess player. He knows how to make clever moves. During the tenure of Siddaramaiah, Ponnanna became legal advisor to chief minister and emerged as his closest aide.
When D K. Shivakumar recently became chief minister, Ponnanna was given the ornamental deputy speaker’s post, which would have made him a political dummy. Unlike others, Ponnnanna did not make any protest. He used his contacts in Delhi (I feel it must be K.C. Venugopal, Congress general secretary) and managed to land the post of political secretary to the CM.
Ponnanna is a politician to watch in Karnataka. His handicap is that he belongs to the Kodava community, which is numerically small, confined mainly to the Virajpet assembly constituency in Kodagu.
