Bengaluru: Upset with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership, Karnataka’s mining tycoon Gali Janardhana Reddy Sunday launched a new political party, Kalyana Rajya Pragati Paksha (KRPP), just a few months ahead of the elections in the southern state.
The former BJP minister also announced that he would contest from Gangavathi in Koppal district, about 61 km from Ballari.
“In the name of Kalyana Rajya Pragati Paksha (KRPP) with my thinking, those of Basavanna…and in a way to demonstrate that there can be no gain from politics that fuel conflict between caste and religion. In the coming days, I will go to every village across the state with this message,” Reddy said in Bengaluru.
BJP leaders Somashekar Reddy, Karunakar Reddy and B. Sriramulu have not been called to join his new outfit for now, he added.
While Somashekar Reddy is the MLA from Ballari city, his brother Karunakar is the legislator from Harapanahalli. Both are brothers of Gali Janardhana Reddy. Sriramulu, who is the sitting MLA from Molkalmuru, is a close associate of the mining baron.
The BJP, under Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, already faces a multitude of challenges ahead of the Karnataka elections, including allegations of corruption, growing infighting, communal tensions and lack of development. With Reddy’s entry, the challenges will only intensify as he is likely to eat into votes of all parties in the region.
According to the people aware of the developments, Reddy’s attempts to return to the BJP fold failed as the party kept its distance from the mining tycoon who considered late Sushma Swaraj as his ‘mother’ and was an admirer of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
The Ballari strongman was part of the first BJP government in south India under B.S. Yediyurappa in 2008 that collapsed after internal rebellion, resort politics, allegations of widespread corruption and the unearthing of the illegal iron ore scam which continues to haunt the party.
Reddy said that in 2018, then BJP president Amit Shah made a statement that the party had nothing to do with him. However, two days later he was asked to meet Shah who told him to work towards the victory of his friend Sriramulu in Molkalmuru in neighbouring Chitradurga district, he claimed. Sriramulu is the transport and tribal welfare minister of Karnataka.
Reddy had camped in a farmhouse just outside Ballari from where he ran the entire campaign for Sriramulu even though the latter was barely present there as he was contesting from two seats.
“He (Shah) told me that I will be given an office bearer’s post soon after the elections but instead my home was raided by the CBI in September 2018,” the former minister said, adding that his daughter had just given birth and that he even approached the courts to prove that this was not an excuse.
The CBI team forced the family to pose together for a picture which was the “last straw”, he claimed. “This humiliation happened despite the BJP being in power at the state and the Centre was the last straw.” he said.
Such was his grip on Ballari that Reddy, his brothers and aides allegedly controlled every aspect of administrative and political affairs of the region for over a decade which the then Lokayukta Justice N. Santosh Hegde had called it ‘Republic of Bellary’ (Ballari now).
The 2011 report by Hegde had detailed the extent of scandal, losses to the state exchequer and large-scale and irreversible degradation of the environment in areas by mining lords, including the infamous ‘Reddy brothers’.
Meanwhile, Reddy said that he will tour Karnataka in the coming months and later share the number of seats his new outfit will contest as well as the party symbol and manifesto.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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