G Virat Singh/ENS

Bangalore, Mar 7: Now that the much-speculated return of Maharashtra Governor Somanahalli Mallaiah Krishna to Karnataka has become a certainty and the suspense over the turn the state politics would take has heightened, there is one fact about which there is no doubt whatsoever : the political nightmare for former Prime Minister and JD(S) supremo H D Deve Gowda has begun.

Political circles are watching with bated breath the start of Krishna leelas that would have a definite impact on the coming state Assembly elections.

No one expected, as Krishna pointed out, that he would be banished to the Andamans. The state Congress, always a divided house, was relatively less openly split during his reign.

He has a clean public image, had successfully handled major crises like the Rajkumar kidnapping and killing of ex-minister Nagappa by forest brigand Veerappan and the Cauvery agitation.

Three successive years of drought in the state and the constant pin-pricks his regime was subjected to by Deve Gowda, stalling his major projects like the NICE and International Airport, contributed partly to his undoing as also the murmurs, within his own party, that the essentially urbane image of the immaculately dressed and suave Krishna would cost it the rural vote.

Personal ambitions of the wannabe chief ministers might have been behind the whisper campaign, but the fact remained that growth of the rural areas did not keep pace with Bangalores development and became his handicap.

The success of Yashaswini, the rural health insurance programme, and the mid-day meals scheme which improved enrolment in village schools, later came to be lauded and even emulated by the Central Government.

These and the recent waiver of farmers' loans by the Congress-led Union Government may remove that handicap, at least to a large extent, in the coming elections which would be fought under his leadership.

During both periods, Gowda was seen as dominating and interfering in the administration, carrying his personal vendetta against Krishna to ridiculous lengths and placing his dream of making his son (H D Kumaraswamy) the chief minister above all other considerations.

Gowda's brief rule as the country's Prime Minister, marked by too frequent visits to the state, led to the joke that he was the PM of Hassan (his home district). And yet, he was complaining too loudly about the aharashtra Governor's (Krishna's) visits to Bangalore.

He was perceived as having used his (then) access to Sonia Gandhi to see that Krishna was kept out of the state with a gubernatorial posting.

He had been accused of deliberately pressing for the choice of Dharam Singh as the coalition CM so that his (Gowda's) sons could dominate the show.

His attempts to lay every failure at the doors of the coalition partners, Congress first and then BJP, and claiming credit for all the achievements, brought only ridicule.

All these factors are expected to weigh the scales against JD(S) and the BJP may still benefit from the sympathy it got as the wronged party when Gowda refused to honour the commitment to hand over power to it (though not as much as it would have, if the elections were held sooner than now).

During the second coalition rule, the Congress had not been a very effective Opposition mostly due to the division in its own ranks and the leadership of the ailing Dharam Singh.

The talk of revamping the party demoralised PCC president Mallikarjun Kharge who, as the main leader of the Scheduled Castes in the Congress also nursed chief ministerial ambitions. And the failure to do the revamping even after talking too often about it exposed the factionalism in the party.

Around Holi time, the Krishna leelas are scheduled to come up on the political stage in Karnataka. One can only hope they would be as entertaining as the original ones.