Undented so far by illegal mining charges, Janardhan Reddy now disqualified as MLA

The mining baron’s money power and the popularity of his former associate B Sreeramulu, a Scheduled Tribe leader, were key factors in the BJP’s success in the Ballari, Raichur, Koppal districts in North Karnataka from 2004 to 2013 – before the illegal mining scam felled the Reddy mining empire. Reddy, 58, made a return to the BJP last year, after spending nearly a decade in the wilderness.

In a notification issued Thursday, Secretary of the Karnataka Assembly M K Vishalakshi said Reddy stood disqualified from May 6 onwards. The disqualification will be applicable till six years after his release from prison, unless Reddy gets a stay on his conviction by a relevant court.

Last October, Congress Karwar MLA Satish Sail was convicted by a special court in an illegal mining case but his conviction was suspended by the Karnataka High Court the following month.

Reddy’s disqualification means there is now one vacancy in the 224-member Karnataka Assembly, where the BJP, the main Opposition party, has 65 MLAs at present.

Reddy and his brothers G Somashekara Reddy and G Karunakara Reddy first came to limelight when they threw their weight behind the late BJP leader Sushma Swaraj when she took on Congress leader Sonia Gandhi from Ballari in the 1999 Lok Sabha polls. Swaraj lost, but the high-profile contest, in Sonia Gandhi’s first election, ensured the Reddys caught the BJP’s attention.

At the height of their political power, while Reddy was an MLA of the BJP, his brothers got elected to Parliament. But, during the 2008-2013 tenure of the first BJP government in Karnataka, allegations surfaced against them of illegal grabbing of iron ore from forests and iron ore mines of private and public firms, amid a mining boom.

It was in 2010 that Reddy’s OMC first faced charges of illegal mining on the Karnataka-Andhra Pradesh border by removing boundary markings. An investigation into illegal mining by the Karnataka Lokayukta in 2010-11 revealed illegal exports of iron ore worth more than Rs 12,228 crore from Karnataka between 2006 and 2011, allegedly by the mining mafia operated by Reddy.

He was arrested by the CBI in September in 2011, two months after the Lokayukta report rocked the state, and spent a year in prison. He was also barred from entering the Ballari region, until recently, by the Supreme Court.

A CBI probe into the illegal mining between 2008-2011, conducted on Supreme Court directions, found that a mining mafia allegedly run by Reddy and his associates excavated iron ore illegally from Ballari and surrounding areas and sold it to traders, who transported it to ports and exported it without forest clearances and taxes.

After the BJP sidelined him following the charges, Reddy formally exited the party in 2022 and floated the Kalyana Rajya Pragathi Paksha. In the 2023 Assembly elections, Reddy’s Gangavathi constituency in Koppal was the only seat won by the Paksha. Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Reddy merged his party with the BJP.

Even during the time the BJP distanced itself from Reddy, it continued its association with his brothers and his close associate Sreeramulu. This means that 2004 onwards, Reddy and his associates have dominated politics in Ballari, losing the region only briefly in 2013 to the Congress, after the illegal mining racket was exposed by the Karnataka Lokayukta.

As per the poll affidavit filed by Reddy for the 2023 Karnataka Assembly polls, he has 20 pending criminal cases against him. Nine of these are being prosecuted by the CBI. Eight CBI cases against Reddy are still in the trial stage.

Apart from Reddy, the Lokayukta report named several BJP ministers in the illegal mining scam, including then CM B S Yediyurappa. In 2016, Yediyurappa was acquitted in a case prosecuted by the CBI, where he and his sons were accused of receiving Rs 40 crore kickbacks from mining firms.