Shobha Karandlaje

The 56-year-old originally hails from Puttur in Dakshina Kannada. While she identifies herself as a social worker, Karandlaje is a postgraduate in Social Work (MSW) and Sociology (MA).

Karandlaje was first picked as the Udupi District Bharatiya Janata Party Women Morcha chairperson in 1997 after which her active participation in the Sankalp Rath Yathra in 1999 led by B S Yediyurappa (Yeddyurappa then) was noted by the state leadership of BJP. Her close association with BSY is believed to have picked up since then.

She was soon picked as a secretary of the party’s Karnataka Unit in 2000 after which she made way to the Karnataka Legislative Council for the first time in 2004. Four years later, the party gave her a ticket to contest in the Legislative Assembly polls from the Yeshwanthpur segment in Bengaluru when she became an MLA for the first time.

Interestingly, she was offered the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj portfolio in the cabinet, when she was 42. However, she was made to resign from the Cabinet based on a compromise formula worked out by the BJP High Command to work defuse in-party differences between two factions.

Fondly called ‘Shobhakka’ by her supporters, she was soon picked again as the Energy Minister in the Jagadish Shettar-led cabinet when she was also given the concurrent charge to handle Food and Civil Supplies. Interestingly, she was the lone woman minister in the state cabinet then. Further, as BSY formed the Karnataka Janata Party (KJP) breaking away from BJP, she resigned her ministership to quit the BJP cabinet.

In 2019, Karandlaje had improved her majority by over 60,000 votes from that of 2014 to record a majority of over 2.4 lakh votes. After her re-election to the 17th Lok Sabha in 2019, she was first picked as a member of the Standing Committee on Energy, and later to the Committee on Empowerment of Women and the Consultative Committee of the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

However, she was dropped from the BJP's Lok Sabha candidates list for the 2024 General Election. Kota Srinivas Pujary was given a ticket from the Udupi-Chikmanglur seat instead, who went on to win the elections by over two lakh votes.