Karnataka BJP still without a leader, the man who stepped in for Yediyurappa bows out

Gowda, a close confidant of Yediyurappa and the Bengaluru North MP, might not have been fielded in the Lok Sabha polls next year, according to the buzz within the party. BJP leaders said the former CM was not happy with the party remaining without leaders for so many months. On Wednesday, he said the delay in appointing a Leader of the Opposition had been an embarrassment for the party.

He was also said to be unhappy with the BJP-JD(S) alliance for the parliamentary elections. On October 7, he said, “The state leaders were kept out of this decision. We did not even discuss this issue. Maybe, it was done keeping the party’s national interests in mind and to oppose the Congress.” A couple of weeks later, on October 25, the party’s central leadership summoned Gowda to Delhi.

Short CM tenure and Central run

Gowda hails from Puttur in Dakshina Kannada district. He studied law in college and served as the district general secretary of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) before moving on to state BJP Yuva Morcha in 1983.

A veteran BJP leader from coastal Karnataka who chose not to be named said, “Sadananda Gowda’s rise in Puttur started when the BJP did not have much presence in Karnataka, including the coastal region. However, the RSS has strong roots. V S Acharya, Sadananda Gowda, and other leaders were almost early BJP workers and then leaders of coastal Karnataka. When the party grew, it was obvious that they got positions. The Sangh has a big role in their growth.”

Though he was never a crowd-puller, when the Yediyurappa government fell in August 2011 over an episode of illegal mining and other corruption accusations, Yedyiurappa handpicked him for the CM’s post. This surprised even Gowda who after taking charge of the state said, “Idhu bayasade bandha bhagya (it is an unexpected fortune)”. A few months before the CM’s chair fell on his lap, he had expressed disappointment over not being appointed the head of the Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF). But soon afterwards he fell out with Yediyurappa and in July 2012 was replaced by Jagadeesh Shettar.

After winning from Bengaluru North in 2014, he served as Railways Minister for six months and then became the Union Law Minister. He has also held the statistics and programme implementation, and chemicals and fertilizers portfolios. He was dropped from the Union Cabinet in a reshuffle in July 2021, days after a video of his became public, causing embarrassment to both the state and the Centre. Gowda claimed that the video was “fake and fabricated”. The incident pushed him to the margins of the party and since then has not been very active in state politics.