Janata Dal (Secular)

Janata Dal (Secular), regional political party primarily in Karnataka state, southern India. It also has a presence in adjoining Kerala state and in national politics.

The party, formed in 1999, had its origins in the Janata (People’s) Party, founded in 1977 as a coalition of several smaller parties that combined forces to oppose the Indian National Congress (Congress Party). In 1988 the Janata Party and other smaller parties merged to form the Janata Dal (JD), which was part of a renewed opposition to the Congress Party called the United Front (UF). Eight years later the JD’s H.D. Deve Gowda was able to form a short-lived (June 1996–April 1997) UF coalition government, with himself as prime minister. In 1999, however, the JD underwent a major split over the question of the party’s becoming allied with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition government. The faction opposed to that alliance, led by Deve Gowda, formed a new party that came to be called the Janata Dal (Secular), or JD(S), while the remainder of the JD was designated the Janata Dal (United), or JD(U), and became a part of the NDA. Initially, after its formation, the JD(S) subsequently kept its distance politically from both the Congress Party and the BJP.

The JD(S) had a lacklustre beginning at the polls. In the 1999 elections to the Karnataka state legislative assembly, it won only 10 of the 203 seats it contested in the 224-member chamber. The party fared much better five years later, when it garnered 58 seats in the assembly. It then entered into an alliance with Congress (thus repudiating its policy against collaboration) to form the first-ever coalition government in the state. Congress’s Dharam Singh served as chief minister (head of the government).

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The coalition lasted only 20 months, however, after which the JD(S) withdrew its support and formed another coalition government with the BJP. Under the terms of the agreement between the two parties, each would head the government for 20 months. H.D. Kumaraswamy, son of Deve Gowda and head of the JD(S), served as chief minister between February 2006 and October 2007. At that point, however, Kumaraswamy refused to vacate the chief minister’s chair, and the BJP responded by withdrawing its support. The assembly was dissolved, and the central government in New Delhi took over administration of the state. The JD(S) could win only 28 seats when new assembly elections were held in 2008, which precluded the party from either forming a government or influencing its formation. The BJP, which won 110 seats, put together another coalition government with support from independent candidates.

Nonetheless, the JD(S) retained a significant support base among members of the landowning and farming Vokkaliga caste in southern Karnataka, who constituted about 15 percent of the state’s population. In the run-up to the 2013 state assembly elections, the party proposed a range of pro-farmer measures, and it promised to waive all loans to farmers, weavers, fishermen, and artisans. The party improved on its 2008 performance, increasing its seat total to 40. Congress, which won 121 seats, however, formed the government.

The JD(S) remained a small player on the national political scene, in spite of its past alliances with Congress and the BJP in Karnataka. It was, however, a key constituent of the so-called “Third Front” grouping of leftist and left-leaning political parties. The party won one seat in the 1999 elections to the Lok Sabha (lower chamber of the Indian parliament), three each in the 2004 and 2009 polls, and two in the 2014 contest.

The JD(S) also had a small political presence in the adjoining state of Kerala as part of the Left Democratic Front (LDF) coalition there, winning three and five seats, respectively, in the 2001 and 2006 state assembly elections. Before the 2011 assembly polls, however, the party split when some of its leaders quit the LDF after negotiations failed regarding the allocation of seats. In that year’s elections, the JD(S) faction that remained with the LDF won four seats in the assembly.

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