If the BJP returns to power in Karnataka, it will entirely be the result of PM Modi’s strategy to reach out to voters in the final stretch of the campaign, the ST leader says.
Ballari: Twenty years since he made his electoral debut as a BJP candidate, B. Sriramulu has come a long way.
In that election, he lost the Ballari assembly seat to the Congress candidate by nearly 9,000 votes. Today, he is an MP, and a party leader hoisted to a stature that could make him second only to former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa in Karnataka.
Even so, according to Sriramulu, a member of the scheduled tribes and a close aide of the Reddy brothers, the powerful mining barons, he is an “absolute zero” without a party like the BJP. In an exclusive interview with ThePrint ahead of the 12 May assembly election, he added that the force of all the state’s leaders paled in comparison to PM Modi’s charm.
If the BJP returns to power in the state, the only one in south India where it has been in office, it would entirely be the result of PM Modi’s strategy to reach out to voters in the final stretch of the campaign, he added.
“If we win one seat, 100 or 200 seats, we will win it only because of Modiji,” he said, “It is not because of our (candidates’) personal influence or charisma among the voters. When we campaign, we show everyone Modi’s photograph, and ask them to vote for the lotus symbol.”
“The voters have told us that they vote for Modi and the lotus symbol, that’s all,” he added.
A rollercoaster ride
Sriramulu’s rise to fame has been fuelled by his close association with the Reddy brothers, and his role during Sushma Swaraj’s campaign during the 1999 Lok Sabha election, when he helped her win most of the over 3.5 lakh votes against Sonia Gandhi in Ballari, then a Congress stronghold. Sushma lost by around 50,000 votes, but Sriramulu had made his mark.
It’s his proximity to Swaraj that propelled his rise in Modi and Shah’s esteem.
Sriramulu had a brief spat with the BJP in the wake of former Karnataka Lokayukta Santosh Hegde’s 2011 report on illegal mining, which came while the party was in office.
The report named Yeddyurappa, then the CM, and Janardhan Reddy, one of the Reddy brothers, following which the BJP reportedly sought to distance itself from the mining magnates as a new government was sworn in under D.V. Sadananda Gowda.
Sriramulu then launched his own party, the BSR Congress, which ate into the BJP’s votes in 2013. That election, the Congress came to power. The fences were mended by 2014, as Sriramulu merged his party into the BJP and went on to win the Ballari Lok Sabha constituency for the party.
The Valmiki leader, the BJP hopes, can help the party’s fortunes among voters of the community, as well as Dalits.
He is one of only two MPs the party has made an exception for and allowed to contest the assembly elections, the other being its chief ministerial candidate Yeddyurappa. He is contesting from two seats, Molkalmuru and Badami, the latter against chief minister Siddaramaiah.
His plan for the Congress
Molkalmuru derives its name from a local legend that details how, during a battle with Indians, the British suffered injured knees. And bringing them down to their knees is exactly what Sriramulu wants to do with the Congress and CM Siddaramaiah this election season.
Citing Siddaramaiah’s recent challenge to PM Modi for a debate on the law and order situation in Karnataka versus that in BJP-led states, Sriramulu dared the CM to a public debate with him on what he had done for the state.
“In his cabinet, he has ministers such as K.J. George, who has been named in the death of a deputy superintendent of police; there are several other cases against his government, and today he walks around as if he is Satya Harishchandra,” he said.
The Reddy connection
While Sriramulu has been jet-setting across the state to campaign in various constituencies, one person has been holding the fort for him in Molkalmuru.
His “dear friend” Janardhan Reddy has parked himself in a house in the constituency, and spends close to 10 hours a day campaigning door-to-door for Sriramulu.
Yet, the BJP high command has emphatically distanced itself from Reddy every time he is seen with a senior party leader on the campaign stage.
Sriramulu is quick to defend his mentor as well as the party. “Janardhan Reddy is just my friend. He works for the party but does not hold any official post. What our senior leaders say is right. He is not with the party…” he said.
“We all have to work within a system, and each of us needs to fall in line,” he added.
“This is a war I must win,” he concludes as he steps out among his sea of supporters to continue his campaign.