New Delhi: Former BJP leader Gali Janardhana Reddy’s comeback to politics may prove to be successful, with the mining baron putting up a spirited fight in the Gangawati seat in Karnataka’s Koppal district.
According to Election Commission (EC) trends Saturday afternoon, Reddy was ahead of his nearest rival, the Congress’s Iqbal Ansari, by a slender margin of 2,441 votes.
Reddy, who has been banned from entering Ballari according to his bail conditions in an illegal mining case, floated a new party in December last year after his fallout with the BJP. The party, called the Kalyana Rajya Pragati Paksha (KRPP), had fielded 37 candidates in these elections, mostly in the Hyderabad Karnataka belt. The party’s symbol is a football.
Reddy’s wife, Gali Lakshmi Aruna, was contesting on a KRPP ticket from his bastion of Ballari city. Against her was Reddy’s own brother, Gali Somasekhara Reddy, who was contesting on a BJP ticket. According to EC trends, both Lakshmi and Somasekhara were trailing behind the Congress’ Nara Bharath Reddy in the seat. After nine rounds of counting, while Lakshmi was in second place with 22,894 votes, Somasekhara, the sitting MLA from the seat, was in third place with 18,220 votes. Bharath Reddy had polled 32,099 votes till the time.
Janardhan Reddy’s other brother, Gali Karunakara Reddy, who contested from the Harapanahalli seat, was trailing behind an independent candidate, Latha Mallikarjun, by 11,681 votes.
The Reddy brothers are somewhat of an institution in Ballari. The district’s reputation as a billionaire’s district has been largely built by the three Reddy brothers.
Sons of an Andhra Pradesh police constable, they moved to Ballari in the 80s and eventually entered the iron-ore mining business in 2001, when they set up the Obulapuram Mining Company. Business roared during the 2004-06 mining boom and they reportedly minted huge amounts of money by exporting iron ore to countries like China. However, the Reddy’s mines came under the scanner of the Karnataka Lokayukta in 2011, and were thereafter investigated by the CBI for alleged illegal mining and exporting of iron ore from the area.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)