BS Yeddyurappa, story of a clerk who got BJP to relax its 75-year age bar in Karnataka
Yeddyurappa earned his BA degree from a Mandya college and went on to work as a clerk in the Karnataka government's Department of Social Welfare in 1965. But, he did not like the job, which he quit and shifted to Shikaripura, now his constituency.
At Shikaripura, Yeddyurappa joined the Veerabhadra Shastri's Rice Mill as a clerk. Here he fell in love with the mill owner's daughter Mythra. Yeddyurappa married Mythra Devi and opened up his own a hardware shop. But he was still unhappy on professional front
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This dissatisfaction from within drew Yeddyurappa towards the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the organisation that he had joined at 15. Now, he quickly climbed the ladder in the organisation, soon becoming the RSS district unit chief of Shivamoga.
The decade of 1970s propelled Yeddyurappa to popularity and fame. His first brush with politics came in 1973 when he was elected as a member of the Shikaripura Municipal Council. Yeddurappa was jailed during Emergency. He was reelected as councillor in 1977
This was also the time when the issue of labourers was the hot cake of politics. Yeddyurappa took up the cause of landless agricultural workers and bonded labourers in Shivamoga district.
He led a successful protest against the Karnataka forest department, which had plans to plant eucalyptus saplings on the lands given to landless agricultural labourers under "land to the tiller" scheme.
Yeddyurappa also led a group of over 1,700 bonded labourers from Shivmoga district to the deputy commissioner's office demanding their immediate release and subsequent rehabilitation at the state expense. His popularity had suddenly soared high pulling him towards assembly politics.
He was already a member of the Jana Sangh (BJP's forerunner) since 1970. In 1980, he joined the BJP after its formation and in 1983 Yeddyurappa contested and won from Shikaripura Assembly seat in Karnataka. Incidentally, this was also the first assembly election for CM Yeddyurappa's predecessor Siddaramaiah.
Yeddyurappa went on to Shikaripura seat five more times. The Lingayat strongman is known to have espoused the cause of farmers, something which was repeately referred to by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his election speeches.
Yeddyurappa may have landed in the hot seat of Karnataka chief minister in 2004 itself when the BJP emerged as the single largest party, but the Congress and JD(S) of former prime minister H D Deve Gowda cobbled together an alliance, and a government was formed under Dharam Singh.
Known for his political sagacity, Yeddyurappa joined hands with H D Kumaraswamy, Deve Gowda's son, in 2006 and brought down the Dharam Singh government after the chief minister was indicted by Lokayukta in an alleged mining scam.
Under a rotational chief ministership arrangement, Kumaraswamy became the chief minister and Yeddyurappa his deputy. However, the coalition government collapsed as the JD (S) reneged on the power sharing deal after 20 months, paving the way for elections.
In the 2008 polls, the Lingayat heavyweight led the party to victory, and the first BJP government in the south was formed under him. Soon controversies swirled around Yeddyurappa over alleged abuse of office to favour his sons in allotment of land in Bengaluru.
The indictment by Lokayukta in an illegal mining scam was the last straw that broke the camel's back, and he was forced to resign on July 31, 2011. On October 15 that year, he surrendered before the Lokayukta court, after it issued a warrant against him in connection with alleged land scams, and was in jail for a week, dealing a body blow to the BJP's claim of being a party with a difference.
Sulking after having been made to quit, Yeddyurappa broke his decades-long association with the saffron party and formed the Karnataka Janata Paksha. However, ploughing a lonely furrow, he failed to make the KJP a force to reckon with in Karnataka politics but wrecked the BJP's chances of retaining power in the 2013 polls, winning six seats and polling about 10 per cent votes.
As Yeddyurppa faced an uncertain future and the BJP looked for a leader with a formidable reputation to lend its campaign the required heft ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the two cosied up to each other. On January 9, 2014, Yeddyurappa merged his KJP with the BJP.
In the Lok Sabha elections that followed, the BJP won 19 of the state's 28 seats, a remarkable turnaround for the party which had secured a measly 19.9 per cent votes in the Assembly polls just a year ago leading to the fall of its first government.
Notwithstanding the taint of corruption, Yeddyurappa's status and clout grew in the BJP. On October 26, 2016, he got a huge relief when a special CBI court acquitted him, his two sons and son-in-law in a Rs 40 crore illegal mining case, which had cost him the chief ministership in 2011.
In January 2016, the Karnataka High Court quashed all 15 FIRs against Yeddyurappa lodged by the Lokayukta police under the Prevention of Corruption Act. In April that year, he was appointed the state BJP chief for the fourth time.
The Lingayat leader, however, continued to be dogged by controversies, with the anti-corruption bureau launching proceedings against him in an alleged illegal land denotification case. He petitioned the high court, which stayed the ACB proceedings against him.
The taint of alleged corruption notwithstanding, the BJP declared him its chief ministerial candidate, ignoring the taunts by the Congress. The BJP, too, relaxed its unsaid rule of retirement for leaders after reaching 75 years of age to allow Yeddyurappa have his say. Party stalwarts like LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi had to take backseat under this rule in the BJP after 2014.
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