BANGALORE, MAY 12:  EVEN as the curtains on the current round of  parliamentary polls are set to come down, intense speculation is on as to who will get to become the next Prime Minister? Will Dr Manmohan Singh get a second term or Lal Krishna Advani realize his dream? Or, with a hung parliament being a distinct possibility, can some dark horse or shall we say mare emerge?

Well, we may have to wait till May 16 even to get an inkling on what is likely to happen. Of course, the exit polls to be aired after the final phase of polling on May 13 might give a broad hint. Anyway, that is a bigger issue. But, imagine the outcome if the famed Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi danseuse Mallika Sarabhai, daughter of the dancing legend Mrinalini Sarabhai and renowned space scientist Dr Vikaram Sarabhai, were to trounce the Advani from his pocket borough of Gandhinagar constituency in Gujarat?  Can a 54-year-old novice contesting as an independent, whose only claim to political activism is her tireless crusade against
BJP’s rising star Narendra Modi for his government’s role in the post-Godhra carnage, aspire to defeat the 81-year-old saffron warhorse? Just imagine the kind of political turmoil that might be created!

George Fernandes, Capt Gopinath, Mallika Sarabhai and Meera Sanyal

Mallika, obviously, is a lone ranger tilting at windmills without any organization or cadres to support her like the fabled Don Quixote. She is not alone. There are many other professionals who have dared to soil their feet by entering into the dirty world of electoral politics by contesting as independents.

There is 47-year-old Meera Sanyal, vice president and country chief of ABN Amro Bank,  taking on Congress party’s Murli Deora and BJP-backed Shiv Sena’s Mohan Ravle, both former MPs,  in Mumbai South, or nearer home, Air Deccan’s founder Capt G R Gopinath, hailed as the father of low-cost-aviation, challenging the might of BJP’s national general secretary and former Union civil aviation minister Ananth Kumar, a four-term MP to boot, from Bangalore South unmindful of the tough fight posed by Congress party’s US-returned Youth Congress leader Krishna Byregowda and JD(S) party’s educationist Prof E Radhakrishna,
a Mangalorean.

Mallika, Sanyal and Capt Gopi, as he is known to his friends, are just some of the prominent independents, who have entered the hustle-bustle of electoral politics leaving their cushy jobs and lifestyles, unmindful of their lack of any political experience. But there are others, who have chosen to contest as independents after being discarded by their parties, notable among them being a prominent Mangalorean like George Fernandes, who needs no introduction to even the least politically savvy.  The former convenor of BJP-led NDA, who could notch a thumping victory from jail, is contesting as an independent from Muzaffarpur in Nitish Kumar-ruled Bihar upon being denied the JD(U) ticket due to ill-health.

Can these independents, the lone rangers that they are, beat the odds and succeed against candidates from established national or regional political parties like puny Davids winning over mighty Goliaths? If they cannot, then wouldn’t their candidature help parties or individuals considered by many as `unworthy’?

In fact, this issue disturbed a normally taciturn, circumspect and mild-mannered individual like Dr Singh to decry the likes of Sanyal and Gopi as ``spoilers.’’ He, of course, didn’t mention Mallika, because she would have done a really big favour to the Congress if she could somehow tame Advani in the lion’s den as it were.
There are many others like the Siddaganga Mutt’s junior seer, Sri Gowrishankar Swamiji, who wanted to contest as an independent from Tumkur and finally accepted the Samajwadi Party’s offer to be its candidate, or Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises Ltd (NICE) Managing Director Ashok Kheny, who threatened to contest as an independent against JD(S) supremo H D Deve Gowda for daring to oppose his company’s  mega Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor (BMIC) project from Hassan, Mandya or even Belgaum or from any of the 28 lok sabha constituency in the state, but ultimately clammed up.

Many other ordinary people like 38-year-old Hubble autorickshaw driver Janumala Bhaskar from Dharwad and Maremma (38), a daily wage earner of Shuklapet village in Bellary district’s Sandur taluk, contesting from Koppal to highlight the travails of less fortunate persons or the daily wage earner Kasturi Bavi of Rukmini Nagar living in a Ashraya housing colony, who has been walking barefoot since the last four years and vowed to do so till the Kannada flag was hoisted on the Belgaum city corporation building, contesting from Belgaum, or the physically challenged person M Ramesh, who is contesting from Chamarajanagar constituency to focus attention on the plight of the vast majority of `unfortunate’ people like him.

There are even those holding out outlandish promises like granting freedom to Tibet like Mahesh Joshi, who is contesting from Bhopal, or 67-year-old farmer Sangamesh  Shekarayya Hiremath of Mittalkot village, who is contesting as an independent from Bagalkot, to bring back black money stashed in Swiss banks and  distribute them among farmers, or Mary Francis (60), a housewife of Kerala, who lost her property to the Moolampally project and is contesting from Ernakulam to represent the cause of homeless evictees like her, or even a Muslim housewife like Begum Shanaz Sidrat, president of the 75-year-old outfit Bazm-e-Khawateen for the empowerment of Muslim women, contesting  from Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh against the likes of former Miss India Nafisa Ali from SP or Congress party’s Rita Bahuguna, daughter of late Hemavathy Nandan Bahuguna.  In fact, Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt, who is better known as Munna Bhai for his film role with the same title, was supposed to get the SP ticket for Lucknow but had to back out as the Supreme Court declined his request.

If one were to go through the list of candidates from across the country in all the 543 constituencies, names of  many more interesting  contestants are sure to crop up.  Of course, it is difficult and not feasible to chronicle all or most of the independents.  Apart from these figures, there are persons like  Kannadiga Hottepakasha Rangaswamy, who died two years back and figured in the Guinness Book World Records for unsuccessfully contesting the highest number of 86 elections from 1967 till 2007, or Dr K Padmarajan  of Tamil Nadu, who is contesting from Bangalore rural against former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy of JD(S). He has contested elections in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, Kerala and Karnataka from civic body polls to local bodies, assembly, lok sabha, rajya sabaha, vice president and presidential polls for 100 times since 1988 and claimed to have lost Rs 10 lakh in security deposits alone.  Rangaswamy-Padmarajan and others like him have been or were in the fray to seek cheap popularity or instant fame as their names are bound to figure for all times to come.

But the independents, barring a few isolated exceptions, rarely make it as the voters tend to prefer candidates belonging to national or regional political parties as is evident from the electoral statistics for the last 14 lok sabha elections.  Out of the total number of 66,524 candidates, including 37,440 independents, who had contested in all the last 14 parliamentary polls, barely 214 have managed to enter parliament.   Of the 214 independents, a meagre two  from the state were successful. They are:  Sugandhi Murgiappa Siddappa, who won from Bijapur north seat in 1957, and D D Dattatreya, better known as the Kannada poet Dinakar Desai who popularised the limericks in Kannada, from Kanara in 1967.  But more illustrious literary persons like coastal Karnataka’s Jananapith awardee Dr Kota Shivaram Karanth or poet Gopalakrishna Adiga failed to past muster.

From electoral statistics available, the maximum number of independents who made it parliament were 42 in 1957 closely followed by 37 in the first general election in 1952 from out of 481 and 533 independents respectively. In the last eight lok sabha polls since 1977 till 2004, independents were never able to cross the double digit figure with the sole exception of 1989 when 12 independents could win.

 Incidentally, the largest number of independents of 10,635, including a record 863 from Karnataka and a whopping 457 from a single constituency of Belgaum alone, who entered the fray was in 1996 with barely 9 managing to win. This experience, wherein a broadsheet newspaper size ballot paper had to be used for Belgaum,  forced the electoral authorities to raise the security deposit amount from a meager Rs 500 to Rs 10,000 to discourage non-serious candidates.  The year-wise figure of total number of independent with the number of victorious candidates in brackets is as follows: 1952 – 533 (37), 1957 – 481 (42), 1962 – 479 (20), 1967 – 866 (35), 1971 – 1134 (14), 1977 – 1224 (9), 1980 – 2826 (9),  1984 – 3791 (5), 1989 – 3712 (12), 1991 – 5514 (5), 1996 – 10635 (9), 1998 – 1915 (6), 1999 – 1945 (6), 2004 – 2385 (5).

In the current round of elections, as many as 262 independents are in the fray for the 28 seats in the state and the figures for all the 543 constituencies, which complete their tryst with elections after the fifth phase on May 13, is not readily available.

All said and done, it seems independents or Lone Rangers, irrespective of their social standing and good intentions, may find it difficult if not impossible to swim against the tide and succeed.  A few might scrape through and may well find it a rewarding experience, especially in the current political scenario of a hung parliament as is widely predicted by most pollsters because they will be the most sought after people’s representatives.  However, majority of the independents in the poll fray could rue their decision to jump into the electoral arena as they may not be able to succeed in their endeavours of tilting at windmills in true Don Quixote style.