Bengaluru: When B.S. Yediyurappa’s son BY Vijayendra set out to file his nomination papers Wednesday for the upcoming Karnataka assembly election in Shikaripura, his father followed him in a decades-old white Ambassador car.
Yediyurappa, a four-time chief minister of the state, hopes the luck the car brought him since his first election victory in 1983 will brush off on his son.
While Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) strongman has a garage full of cars, he considers the Ambassador car, manufactured by Hindustan Motors, a “lucky charm”, said a close aide. The car, with the registration number “CKR 45”, is in mint condition.
“It was the first car Yediyurappa bought in 1987 and the family has kept it since,” the aide said, asking not to be named.
The Ambassador is considered one of the most iconic cars in the country, with its production spanning 56 years. For long, it was seen as a status symbol among the country’s rich and famous.
Every car owned by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) strongman has the number “45” in various combinations, the aide added. In August 2021, just one month after he was replaced by Basavaraj Bommai as the Karnataka chief minister, Yediyurappa bought a Toyota Vellfire, a luxury car that costs over Rs 1 crore. The registration number for this car is KA05 MD 4545.
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Lucky number 45
The Ambassador, however, hasn’t always been in great shape. “We bought it from the party which had purchased the car for its official work. My father used to travel in it for all official work and later we decided to buy the car as a memory. It was not used for a long time. For around 10 years, it was just lying unused. But his grandsons, Subhash and Bhagat, wanted to refurbish it and gift it to Yediyurappa on his birthday (27 February). They got all the documents, fixed the engine. But since it could not be given on his birthday, they gave it to him before the filing of the nomination,” BY Raghavendra, the MP from Shivamogga and Yediyurappa’s older son, said.
The car has now been registered in Raghavendra’s name.
Yediyurappa has “retired” from active politics and his second son, B.Y. Vijayendra, is the BJP candidate from Shikaripura in Shivamogga. Yediyurappa first entered the Karnataka legislative assembly in 1983 and four years later, he became the state president of the BJP.
“The vehicle was known as the ‘45 car’ and was as famous as Yediyurappa himself. Each and every car that the family bought has the number in it,” Raghavendra said.
The aide quoted above said ‘9’, the sum of ‘4’ and ‘5’, is considered a lucky number by Yediyurappa. Coincidentally, he has so far contested nine assembly elections in the state.
The car is usually parked at the family’s farmhouse in Shikaripura and used sparingly. It is mostly used as a ceremonial ride, another person aware of the matter said.
Karnataka, like many other states, has political leaders with strong belief in religion and, in some cases, superstition. Yeddyurappa had changed the spelling of his name to Yediyurappa before he took oath as the Karnataka chief minister in 2019.
He travelled in this car when he criss-crossed the district in the 1980s — the time during which he is credited for having built the party.
The 80-year-old has emerged as one of the biggest political leaders over the last two decades, taking over as chief minister a record four times in Karnataka.
Yediyurappa has successfully fought eight assembly elections and has only lost one. In 2014, he successfully contested the Lok Sabha election from Shivamogga.
He has not just looked at “auspicious time” to be sworn in as chief minister, but even when he was forced to step down in 2011 over charges of corruption.
In 2011, he did not resign until the end of July, stating that the “time is not right as of now”.
“The month of Ashada will be over on 30 July 2011 on the New Moon day or Amavasya. I will be tendering my resignation as Chief Minister on the forenoon of 31 July 2011,” he wrote in a letter to then BJP national president Nitin Gadkari, dated 27 July 2011.
(Edited by Nisheeth Upadhyay)
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