Resort politics takes centre stage in Karnataka once again

BENGALURU: The Congress party, which has been accusing the opposition BJP of keeping its MLAs in “illegal confinement” at a five-star hotel in Gurgaon , Haryana, followed suit on Friday .
Legislators, who arrived to attend the Congress legislature party meeting, were taken by surprise when they were asked to board two buses at the secretariat. The move was precipitated by fear that its legislators could be poached by the saffron party.
While MLAs representing assembly constituencies in Bengaluru and women members are expected to join their colleagues later on Saturday, the others were taken to Eagleton, The Golf resort in Bidadi. “The resort has only 38 rooms at the moment as they have other guests,” a source said. “We need 75 rooms.”
The move is certainly not a new phenomenon. Karnataka has been the hub of ‘resort politics’ since the late 80s. Any occasion when elected representatives have to vote together, MLAs have been herded into resorts and brought to vote on the D-day.
It all began in 1984 when Andhra Pradesh chief minister NT Rama Rao herded his legislators to Bengaluru prior to a trust vote. Rao, with the help of friend and Karnataka counterpart Ramakrishna Hegde, kept his flock in Nandi hills for nearly a month.
In 2002, Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, facing a trust vote, also packed his Congress MLAs off to Bengaluru. Since the 2004 elections, resort politics has become a routine event in the state, especially when assembly poll results threw up fractured verdicts.
Between 2006 and 2013, resort politics shifted to higher gear under the HD Kumaraswamy and BS Yeddyurappa governments. It was a free for all during the BJP government with Yeddyurappa facing rebellion and he himself bunching his loyal MLAs in a resort while demanding Sadananda Gowda be made the CM instead of Jagdish Shettar. In 2012, he again bunched loyalists in a resort to get Gowda ousted and Shettar made CM.
In 2017, Karnataka grabbed national headlines when Congress leaders led by DK Shivakumar successfully prevented BJP’s attempts to poach Congress MLAs from Gujarat during Rajya Sabha elections. The Congress kept 44 MLAs from Gujarat at the Bidadi resort for nearly a week.
Resorts were again in demand after the 2018 assembly polls threw up a fractured verdict. Ahead of Yeddyurappa’s floor test, Congress had packed off all 79 MLAs to a resort for nearly a week before forming the government with JD(S).