From Puttur to parliament: Shobha Karandlaje’s inspiring success story

Udupi-Chickmagalur MP Shobha Karandlaje, who recently joined the union council of ministers, summed up her journey thus: “I have reached Dilli from halli (village).”

She is among the 11 women members in the council of ministers.

Known as a ‘firebrand’ who has landed herself in several controversies, Shobha, 54, is among the very few women from Karnataka to have been inducted as a union minister. She is now minister of state for agriculture and farmers’ welfare.

Born in Puttur, Shobha has a double masters degree in social work and sociology. It was former MLA A J Kodgi who introduced her to B S Yediyurappa in the 1990s and she was eventually made incharge of the BJP Mahila Morcha. Before this, she was an RSS pracharak in Mangaluru.

Senior BJP leader and former MLC Ramachandre Gowda is among those who nurtured her career in the initial years.

“Her political journey began with her first ever public speech at an election rally in Koratagere,” he says, recalling he was impressed with her clarity of thought.

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From thereon, Gowda would take her to public events and training programmes for BJP cadre. Gowda credits her as someone who had an equal role to the late Ananth Kumar in strengthening the BJP in Karnataka.

In 2004, Shobha became an MLC for the first time. She contested the 2008 Assembly elections from Yeshwantpur and won. She was made the RDPR minister.

She was later made the energy and food and civil supplies minister in the Jagadish Shettar government. With this, Shobha became the only woman to hold the coveted energy portfolio.

A Yediyurappa loyalist, Shobha followed him to the Karnataka Janata Party (KJP).

In 2014, she was back in BJP with Yediyurappa and contested the Lok Sabha polls from Udupi-Chikkamagaluru constituency and won. In 2019, she was re-elected by a huge margin of 2.4 lakh votes.

However, it is widely believed that she has kept distance from Yediyurappa, of late.

But her proximity to Yediyurappa, especially during his regime in 2008, caused several ministers to complain about her “undue interference” in administrative matters.

Undeterred, she established herself as his trusted aide. She was chosen to head the flood relief works in 2009 and was even sent to airlift the Mantralaya seer who was stuck in floods. It’s believed she even edited many of Yediyurappa’s public speeches.

She made a mark as the RDPR and later the energy minister. Former Tumkur Rural MLA Suresh Gowda says, “She introduced a pilot scheme assuring one transformer to every irrigation pumpset, to provide relief to farmers. This saw a huge success.”

Her staunch Hindutva leanings have often landed her in controversies.

In 2020, she was booked by the Kerala police for a tweet where she claimed that Hindu families in Malappuram were not given water for supporting the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

In 2017, she was booked by the Karnataka police for an inflammatory post where she accused the then CM Siddaramaiah of supporting “jihadis who tried to rape a girl in Honnavar.”

In an apparent bid to start with a clean slate, she deleted her old tweets ahead of taking oath as a union minister.

The BJP seems to have struck at several election vantage points with her appointment.

She is now the Vokkaliga face in the union ministry, replacing former minister D V Sadananda Gowda, a move likely to secure Vokkaliga votes for the party.

Her supporters, who resented her being “sidelined” in recent years, see her appointment as a vindication. Shobha believes her loyalty to the Sangh was crucial. “RSS is my strength. I believe that has worked in my favour,” she said.