The political career of the 76-year-old Bookanakere Siddlingappa Yeddyurappa, is completing a full circle in his political career on Friday when he takes oath as the Chief minister of the state for a record fourth time from the Governor Vajubhai R Vala, this evening.
Yeddyurappa, began his political career after being elected as the councilor in Shikaripura Municipality in 1965. Through his crusading effort he built BJP in Karnataka, which had no base in the modern day political history of the state, from a nascent state to a force to reckon with.
He opened the gate to the saffron party in South India, where the BJP had no base until two decades ago.
He was elected as MLA from Shikaripura, his home segment and went on to become Deputy Chief Minister, Lok Sabha member as well as Chief Minister of the state, in his over four decades of public life.
The staunch follower of BJP and RSS, Yeddiyurappa, who was known for his short-temper, however remained in the limelight of the state politics, had strived hard to expand the base of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state and succeeded ensuring BJP come to power on its own for the first time in a State in the South India, in 2008.
A die-hard fighter especially working for the cause of farmers, he made his mark when he led a Padayathra from Shivamogga to Bengaluru taking up the issues of the farmers and to fight in support of their problems.
The BJP leader also served a prison term during Emergency.
Yeddyurappa, had become chief minister of the state in November 2007 for the first time. However his stint lasted only for seven days as the Alliance partner JD(S) decided not to support his government.
He had the last laugh, though, when he led the party to emerge as the single largest party in the 2008 Assembly elections with 110 seats with simple majority mark being 113 in the 224-member Karnataka Assembly. He formed the government by security the support of five Independent MLAs.
The veteran leader, however, had to resign following charges of illegal mining and denotification of revenue land in 2011. Thereafter due to serious differences with the senior party leaders, had quit the Saffron party and floated his own party Karnataka Janata Paksha.
In the 2013 Assembly elections, the BJP which was in power had lost miserably following split of votes with the Yeddyurappa’s KJP party.
Ahead of the 2014 Assembly elections he returned to his parent party, after Narendra Modi led BJP stormed to power at the centre and Modi was keen to bring back the former chief minister into the party fold.
After merging his KJP, Mr Yeddyurappa was elected to the Lok Sabha with a huge margin of over 3.25 lakh votes from Shivamogga segment. However, he had chose to return to state politics, ahead of the 2018 Assembly elections.
Most recently, in the 2018 Assembly elections, he led the BJP to emerge as the single largest party by winning as many as 105 seats and staked claim to form the government, and was sworn as the chief minister in 2018 May, however had to resign within four days as he could not muster the required number to prove majority in the house.
The followed when Congress and JD(S) coming together to form a coalition government. The sulking BJP leader had to watch the coming together of his sworn enemies.
Yeddyurappa did not rest and kept the coalition government on tenterhooks and made maximum efforts to topple the government and succeeded in the next 14 months.
Under Modi factor, he ensured BJP get a stupendous result, winning 25 out of 28 Lok Sabha seats in the recent general elections and also ensure the win of Independent and film actor from JD(S) strong hold Mandya. Congress and the JD(S) returned with a disappointing one seat each.
Later, the JD(S)-Congress coalition government was mired with internal problems and misunderstanding between the two parties leaders reached a zenith when 16 of its MLAs, decided to resign to their Assembly seats and caused the loss of majority for the ruling combine.
(UNI)
