The political battle for the Vokkaliga turf has intensified, with the Bidadi Township Project emerging as a flashpoint. While the initial opposition to the project began over farmers’ interests, it has now emerged as a ground for one-upmanship among leaders of the land-owning caste in the Old Mysore region.

Though it was widely expected to become a thorny issue soon after Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar occupied the top post in the State Congress, his political rival and Union Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy has upped the ante, attracting wider attention within the farming community in south Karnataka in a short span of time. Both leaders are from Bengaluru South district, of which Bidadi is a part.

The political narrative has become messier with personal allegations over the accumulation of wealth by Mr. Shivakumar over the last two decades. This has been countered with a poster campaign against Mr. Kumaraswamy and his family that surfaced in the project-notified area.

Mr. Kumaraswamy’s actions are also being portrayed by the Congress as “smacking of jealousy”, with a fellow Vokkaliga unable to stomach the rise of another leader from the community. Mr. Kumaraswamy on Sunday countered this by asking whether a leader should be allowed to “loot” simply because he is a Vokkaliga.

Incidentally, the project was conceived and notified by Mr. Kumaraswamy during his first term in 2006-07, a fact that is now being highlighted by the Congress. Mr. Shivakumar has repeatedly said that he is not ready to “denotify it now and go to jail.”

Mr. Kumaraswamy has vehemently denied that it is a clash of Vokkaliga personalities, maintaining that the opposition is only to the project. Party sources argued that the “soul and identity” of the Vokkaliga community was its land, and that the community had lost vast tracts of it as Bengaluru’s landscape expanded rapidly over the last three decades.

“Our focus is to protect farmers from real estate interests. It is only incidental that about 80% of farmers in the region are Vokkaligas,” a leader claimed. He also pointed out that the project had been opposed by the Congress during Mr. Kumaraswamy’s tenure.

Several senior Vokkaliga leaders across the political spectrum have also lent their voices to the ongoing farmers’ protest, which is now close to 500 days old, with allegations and counter-allegations continuing to fly.

Congress’s Magadi legislator H.C. Balakrishna, in whose constituency the Bidadi project is coming up, has publicly lashed out at Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashok, who had questioned the viability and need for the project.

These developments also come at a time when BJP’s Vokkaliga leaders are said to be feeling insecure about Mr. Kumaraswamy’s stature within the alliance. Congress MLA N. Cheluvarayaswamy from Nagamangala, once a close confidant of Mr. Kumaraswamy, has also criticised him, while another Vokkaliga leader and former Bengaluru South (then Ramanagara) district in-charge Minister C.N. Ashwathnarayan has opposed the project.

“The two Congress legislators are speaking at the behest of the Chief Minister since both are eyeing Cabinet berths. Only one of them is expected to get a berth,” a Congress leader said.

As farmers protest at Bidadi, KPCC president B.K. Hariprasad and Home Minister Priyank Kharge are among those Congress leaders who have indicated that the project could be dropped if farmers refuse to part with their land. A leader observed that it is also coming at a time when El Niño is expected to affect agriculture in the State significantly, and the optics of land being “snatched” by the government does not augur well.

Battle in Bengaluru north

As Vokkaliga leaders from all three parties are slogging it out over Bidadi in Bengaluru South, another Vokkaliga battle has surfaced in Bengaluru North. BJP Yelahanka MLA S.R. Vishwanath and BJP Chickballapur MP K. Sudhakar are involved in a public spat. Sources said their rivalry goes back several years, as Mr. Vishwanath had earlier sought a ticket for his son from Chickballapur.