The Ballari Connect: ‘Three days ago, we invited Sushmaji for Vara Mahalakshmi puja’
In 2009, as elections reached fever pitch in Ballari, a familiar face in these parts flew in by a special flight, landing at the Toranagallu airstrip to the kind of welcome that is rarely given to outsiders. But Sushma Swaraj — driven through the dust bowl of Ballari to the plush new home of the powerful mine baron Gali Janardhan Reddy, where he and Boya Sriramulu, the man who drove her around during the epic ‘swadeshi beti versus videshi bahu’ election that she lost to then Congress president Sonia Gandhi in 1999 — is loved in this north Karnataka town. Despite losing to Ms Gandhi, she returned every year for the annual Vara Mahalakshmi Pooja, and poured funds into the area’s development, opening the doors for the BJP, which had virtually no presence before she planted the saffron flag in this remote district. Invited once again to attend the puja this coming Friday, she declined, as failing health and the toxic Reddys threw a dampener on regular visits in nearly 10 years.
“Three days ago, we invited Sushma Swaraj to come to Ballari again for the Vara Mahalakshmi puja which falls on August 9. Though she sounded fine, she expressed her inability to make it because of her poor health,” said Dr B.K. Sundar, elder son of Dr Sreenivasa Murthy, father-in-law of devotional singer Sri Vidyabushana. The senior BJP leader used to stay at their residence whenever she was in Ballari and Dr Sundar recalls that she was a down-to-earth person who used to mingle with everyone at his house.
“We felt she was one of our family members and not a famed political leader of the country. She hardly spoke about politics, instead she encouraged us to serve the common people as physicians,” he says.
For more than a decade since 1999, Ms Swaraj had kept her promise of celebrating the Vara Mahalakshmi festival every year in the mining capital of Ballari from where she had unsuccessfully contested the 1999 Lok Sabha elections against Ms Sonia Gandhi. Those associated with her poll campaign recall that Ms Swaraj was a quick learner and started addressing her poll rallies in chaste Kannada winning many a heart, even though at that point in time, she failed to stop the Congress juggernaut in its then bastion. The ‘Sushma versus Sonia’ battle, which was fought on the lines of a ‘Beti versus Bahu’ contest drew scores of apolitical people to the BJP in Ballari and surrounding areas.
It was then that Ms Swaraj announced that as a ‘daughter of Ballari’, she would come to the mining hub to celebrate the festival as long as she was alive. She had been visiting Ballari without fail since 1999 on the occasion of Mahalakshmi Vratha and performed the puja barring 2008, when she did not come due to her father-in-law’s demise.
Dr Sundar also recalled his conversation with her after she decided not to seek re-election in the 2018 Lok Sabha poll from Vidisha. “She told me that she was keeping good health but doctors had asked her to stay safe from infections,” he recalls. “When I cannot mingle with people, what is the point in me continuing in electoral politics,” she had asked. She was a diabetic and had undergone a kidney transplant in December 2016.
Post 2011, she gave the Ballari festival organised by the controversial mining magnates turned politicians, the Reddy brothers who consider her their godmother, a miss, after the Reddys and their close associate B. Sriramulu figured in the multi-crore iron ore mining scam.
Indeed, Ms Swaraj contesting the Lok Sabha elections from Ballari was a turning point in the lives of the Reddy brothers and their friend Sriramulu, who later played a crucial role in installing the first-ever BJP government down the Vindhyas in Karnat-aka, led by B.S. Yediyu-rappa in 2008. But the illegal mining scam involving the Reddy brother and Mr Yediyurappa, led to the exit of the veteran BJP leader from the CM’s post and even landed him a jail stint. In the Assembly polls held in 2013, the Congress swept back to power making the best of the split in the BJP with Yediyurappa forming his own outfit and ensuring the defeat of his parent party.
How Sushma cut the mine baron to size
Ballari was always close to former external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj’s heart and after becoming health minister in the Vajpayee led NDA government, she had allocated funds to the Vijayanagar Institute of Medical Sciences and even organised a massive health camp.
Her association with the Reddy brothers started after they virtually ran her poll campaign during the epic battle against Sonia Gandhi in the Ballari Lok Sabha seat in 1999.
Following the boom in the iron ore mining industry, the Reddy brothers and their aide B. Sriramulu entered the corridors of power in 2004. Even when B.S. Yediyurappa formed the first BJP government down south, he awarded the two brothers Karunakar Reddy and Janardhan Reddy, and Sriramulu berths in his ministry.
However, the bonhomie did not last long and in November 2009, the Reddy minelords executed a political coup against then CM Yediyurappa demanding his resignation with more than 40 BJP legislators holed up in a Hyderabad resort, backing them. Finally, the Reddy’s revolt was extinguished with the mediation of none other than Ms Swaraj.
However, from 2011, with illegal mining involving the Reddy brothers grabbing headlines and the Karnataka Lokayukta coming up with a stinging report it, Ms Swaraj began distancing herself from the tainted Reddy minelords, finally disowning her ‘political offsprings’. She sent across a clear message that she was no longer ‘mother’ to the Reddy brothers while refuting charges that she was a protector of the mining barons and had played a role in their induction into the Karnataka cabinet.
“There cannot be a bigger lie. Let me tell you the truth, I have no hand in the political making of the Ballari brothers. I had nothing to do in making them ministers or building their stature as political leaders,” Swaraj had said in an interview.
“When the Ballari brothers were made ministers, (Arun) Jaitley was in-charge and Yediyurappa was chief minister. Venkaiah (Naidu) and Ananth Kumar were there as senior leaders. Whatever discussions happened, happened between these people. I had nothing to do with it,” Swaraj had said. “My interaction with the Reddy brothers is limited to one day in a year, when I go to Ballari for the puja of Vara Mahalakshmi. For the remaining 364 days, we have no conversation or communication,” she had asserted.
Janardhan mourns godmother’s death
Former minister and mining baron Gali Janar-dhan Reddy who considers former Union minister late Sushma Swaraj his godmother, in a condolence statement said, “It is mother Sushma Swaraj who took me through the perilous journey of politics.” He said Ms Swaraj was a great leader who by contesting the Lok Sabha elections from Ballari, grabbed the attention of all people of India. She also learnt Kannada in a mere 18 days so that she could address the people. “It is incredible to believe that mother Sushma is no more. I am incapable of facing the reality,” he added. “In 1999, my friend B. Srira-mulu (BJP MLA) and I had been to the airport to bid her goodbye. Agonised because of her defeat (to Sonia Gandhi) in the Lok Sabha polls, we almost cried. Like a mother, she consoled us which was an unforgettable moment of my life,” he told this newspaper. “Not only me, my family, especially my daug-hter Brahmani had immea-surable affection for her. For my wife Lakshmi Aruna, Ms Swaraj visiting our home and Ballari was like a great festival,” he added.
