Old political feud in Karnataka’s Davanagere seat has new faces: women contestants

AT A TIME when sexual assault allegations against prominent JD(S) leader Prajwal Revanna have overtaken the state’s political scene, there is a new excitement in this constituency in central Karnataka for the coming elections.

The reason being the two women debutantes in the fray from the Davanagere Lok Sabha seat, which votes on May 7 – the BJP’s Gayathri Siddeshwar, 69, and the Congress’s Dr Prabha Mallikarjun, 48. Both belong to prominent political Lingayat families, with Gayathri the wife of sitting Davanagere MP G M Siddeshwara and Prabha the wife of state Congress minister S S Mallikarjun and the daughter-in-law of Shamanur Shivashankarappa, who at the age of 92 was re-elected to the state Assembly last year.

Known as the ‘Manchester of Karnataka’ for its large cotton production, Davanagere is marked by the political rivalry between the Siddeshwara and Shamanur families, going back to the late ’90s. While the Lok Sabha constituency has been won the past five times by G M Siddeshwara (he is not contesting this time ostensibly due to health reasons, though the fear of anti-incumbency is also seen as a factor), the Shamanur family has always won the Vidhan Sabha elections here.

About 30 km from Davanagere town, in the village of Mayakonda, four women seated in a verandah are having a heated discussion about Gayathri and Prabha. Sharada, who hails from the Golla community, says: “With women as leaders, it is easier for us to open up about our problems. They can empathize with us. Irrespective of the Congress or the BJP, we can hope to be heard, especially on the issues of finance and health.”

Nirmala, who is working in the fields in Mayakonda village and belongs to the Madiga SC community, says that besides the woman