B Sreeramulu: BJP's much needed man in Ballari region

B Sreeramulu, the 47-year old BJP MP from Ballari (formerly Bellari), is a big fan of Telugu superstar of yesteryears Chiranjeevi. That is perhaps why he does not dress like a typical politician, but like a film-star.

He is one of the two MPs -- the other being the party president B.S.Yeddyurappa -- the party is fielding for the May 12 Assembly polls in Karnataka. That explains his importance in this mining kingdom, ravaged a few years ago by large-scale illegal mining of iron ore and exports which claimed Yeddyurappa’s scalp as CM.

Sreeramulu, born in Ballari to a railway employee, did not have an upbringing or education that was exceptional. He studied in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, and has just a graduate degree. One of the richest politicians in Karnataka today, he owes his rise and political existence to disgraced mining baron and former Minister Gali Janardhana Reddy. The two belong to different communities -- Sreeramulu is a Nayaka (Valmiki), a Scheduled Tribe in Karnataka -- but that has barely played out in their relationship.


His devotion to Reddy is so strong that in 2011, when the BJP began sidelining Reddy after the mining taint, Sreeramulu quit the Cabinet, resigned from the party, and contested from Ballari rural as an independent candidate just to prove a point, and establish an identity away from the BJP. He even floated a political outfit, BSR Congress. At that time, Yeddyurappa also formed his own party KJP, and the two together cooked BJP’s goose in the 2013 Assembly polls paving way for the Congress victory. Heeding to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's request, he returned to the party in 2014, and won Ballari Lok Sabha seat on a BJP ticket.

A four-time MLA, Sreeramulu was a councillor in Ballari municipality in 1996. But it was the 1999 Lok Sabha elections in which Congress leader Sonia Gandhi and BJP’s Sushma Swaraj fought a bitter electoral fight, that helped Sreeramulu’s swift rise. Swaraj lost no doubt, but she was deeply impressed by the hard work put in by Sreeramulu and Janardhana Reddy. Today’s BJP sees Sreeramulu as invincible in Ballari.

Then, why has the BJP fielded him from Molakalmuru in the neighbouring Chitradurga district, one would ask. Molkalmuru is surrounded by six Assembly segments (of Ballari and Chitradurga districts) all of which are reserved for ST. The party denied a ticket to sitting MLA and Sreeramulu’s aide Thippeswamy, and opted to go with its sitting MP. The strategy, the party hopes, will led to wins for party candidates in the reserved constituencies in the region.