Lingayat strongman in race for the chair
Yeddyurappa began his political life as secretary of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in Shikaripura. He then became taluka president of the Jana Sangh and, later, president of the town municipality of Shikaripura. He was arrested during the emergency and again in 1983. He contested and won the Shikaripura Assembly seat, which he has represented half-a-dozen times since.
He might have been just another influential BJP MLA, had a dispute not broken out in the BJP between Ananth Kumar and Dhananjaya Kumar. They were rival upper castes. But in Yeddyurappa, the entire Lingayat community saw a new leader they had not had since Veerendra Patil. And the lure of getting a foothold in a state in the south was strong. Moreover, this was not just urban centres - the party saw its rural base growing. So they gave in to Yeddyurappa. No one said a word, for instance, when for the first time in the history of Karnataka, a bequest for a Lingayat Mutt was made in the state Budget.
And Yedyurappa's bounty knew no bounds after the 2008 Assembly election, which the BJP swept. He doled out contracts, offered ministerships and denotified land with an open hand. The Karnataka Lokayukta finally caught up with him. Yeddyurappa confessed that an illegal iron ore export racket that involved some of his ministers had flourished under his watch. But the Lokayukta also charged him with denotifying government land for his sons Raghavendra and Vijayendra. He was arrested in October 2011 and sent to jail. Later, he got bail, and has since been acquitted.
Obviously he could not continue to be chief minister when he had been sent to jail. He then said Sadanand Gowda should be made chief minister. A Vokkaliga but from a small sub-caste, Yeddyurappa thought Gowda would be biddable - he had no mass base (he had to be elected to the Legislative Council because no one would vacate their Assembly seat for him); he would be the person through whom Yeddyurappa could manipulate his legal cases.
But Gowda proved to be his own man. So when Yeddyurappa got bail and wanted his old job back, Gowda said he would not move. Yeddyurappa mounted another rebellion. Later, he felt he had had enough of the BJP and in 2012 announced he was walking out of the BJP to form his own party, the Karnataka Janata Paksha. He merged the KJP back into the BJP in 2014. In 2017, he was named the BJP's chief ministerial candidate by party president Amit Shah.