What all can you do with Rs 500 crore? A lot, if you are willing to spend it in a way that’s useful to people. Or just conduct a wedding, if you are Gali Janardhana Reddy. Though there is no way to tell how much money the politician-mining baron spent on his daughter’s gala wedding last week, media reports put the cost between Rs 100 crore and Rs 500 crore. Reddy, on his part, has promised to file details with the income tax department, but no one expects the truth.
A wedding invite that came with an LCD screen, expansive movie-like sets that recreated the ancient temples of Vijayanagara empire at Bengaluru’s Palace Grounds, more than 50,000 guests who were treated to a sumptuous lunch spread of more than 100 dishes, heaps of diamond-studded jewellery and thousands of security personnel — the wedding certainly was a lavish affair, probably the biggest that Karnataka has ever seen. The cost may be a subject of speculation but not the fact that money flowed freely at the ceremony.
Five hundred crore rupees is the kind of money that’ll be enough to serve three meals a day to the entire population of Ballari district for half a month at Rs 50 a meal. Ballari, Reddy’s home district that he plundered to build his iron ore-enriched business-cum-political empire, is one of the most backward in Karnataka. While how he pulled off such a flamboyant show in the middle of a crippling cash crunch and the Modi government’s war on ill-gotten wealth has remained a mystery, the wedding underlined one factor — that Reddy is back in Karnataka politics.
In fact, the wedding was not about the big money that he spent, neither was it about the 21-year-old bride and her 25-year-old groom. It was about Reddy — only about him. After being away from political limelight for about five years, he needed something like this to mark his presence on the state’s political stage. The presence of political bigwigs at the wedding, despite Reddy’s tainted past, is a testimony to the fact that he still has a few tricks up his political sleeve.
BJP state unit chief B S Yeddyurappa, Union minister Sadananda Gowda, Karnataka Home Minister G Parameshwara, who also heads the Congress in the state, and Power Minister D K Shivakumar were among the prominent politicians who chose to attend the wedding. That Yeddyurappa attended both the pre-wedding reception and the wedding next day shows how the BJP led by him is ready to embrace Reddy again. That two senior Congress ministers were present reveals how Reddy’s clout runs beyond political boundaries.
But with Reddy returns the spectre of corrupt-manipulative politics that ruled the first half of the 2008-13 BJP regime. Reddy, who was said to have bankrolled many BJP candidates in the 2008 elections, started calling the shots as soon as the party formed the government. He, his brother Karunakara Reddy and close aide Sriramulu became ministers, and with a group of faithful MLAs, he arm-twisted the Yeddyurappa government into granting many concessions in his favour. It was during this period that he was alleged to have made crores of rupees through illegal mining. The government shut its eyes to his activities in Ballari.
Yeddyurappa, who till then had a relatively clean image, was sucked into a web of corruption that finally cost him his job, and reputation. This continued till Reddy’s ouster from the Cabinet and later arrest in the illegal mining case in 2011. Reddy spent 40 months in jail. Yeddyurappa too was arrested and jailed in corruption cases. While the former chief minister has managed to shake off most of the cases against him, those against Reddy are yet to reach closure.
Yeddyurappa is back at the helm of the BJP in the state. His taking over of the party reins in April this year also marked the return of his brand of politics in the BJP. He runs the party with the help of a trusted few, and there are already rumblings in the state unit. But the central leadership backs him to put the BJP on the path to recovery in Karnataka, the only southern state where it can be the ruling party.
Reddy’s possible return to active politics is relevant in this context. With the Congress slowly losing its grip over the state and the JD(S) being reduced to a party with limited presence, the BJP’s fortunes are on the rise. Reddy knows this. The support of the Reddy-Sriramulu team and a potent mix of caste politics and money power could tilt the balance in favour of the BJP in a contest with the Congress. A BJP win in the 2018 Assembly elections could mean the return of the Yeddyurappa-Reddy combination. Will it be 2008 again?
kiranprakash@newindianexpress.com