In a parting shot, Yediyurappa blames Centre for rocky start

Bookanakere Siddalingappa Yediyurappa, arguably the BJP’s tallest leader in Karnataka, will hang up his boots as chief minister, a post he held four times.

Making the announcement on the occasion of him completing two years in office, Yediyurappa fired a salvo at the Centre as he described his tenure as ‘trial by fire’.

“It was an agniparikshe from day one,” he said. “As soon as I took charge as CM, the state witnessed unprecedented floods. But the Centre didn’t allow me to form my Cabinet. I had to handle the situation all by myself,” he said.

This was Yediyurappa’s fourth stint as chief minister, and the second since the Assembly election results were out in May 2018.

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His first time as CM lasted nine days in 2007. His second tenure lasted from May 2008 to July 2011. His third innings lasted three days in May 2018 when he resigned because he lacked the numbers to prove majority in the Legislative Assembly. On July 26, 2019, Yediyurappa became the CM for the fourth time.

Yediyurappa, a Lingayat, was born February 27, 1943 at Bookanakere village in the KR Pet taluk of Mandya district. But politically, Yediyurappa belongs to the Shivamogga district where he started his work as a swayamsevak of the RSS in 1965. He was 29 when he first entered public office as the Shikaripura taluk president of the Janasangh.

Yediyurappa was first elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1983 and has since represented Shikaripura seven times. He also represented Shivamoga in Lok Sabha.

Along with the late Ananth Kumar, Yediyurappa is credited with building the BJP from scratch in Karnataka. The party went from just two members in the Legislative Assembly in the 1980s to 105 now, in which time Yediyurappa became the state BJP president thrice (1988-91, 1998-99 and April 2016 to now).

In 2013, Yediyurappa broke away from the BJP to head the Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP), which heavily dented the saffron party’s poll prospects by bagging nearly 10% vote share. He came back to the BJP in 2014, ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

In all this, the BJP leader has changed the spelling of his name from ‘Yeddyurappa’ to ‘Yediyurappa’. The ‘i’ is meant to bring him luck because the extra ‘d’ has not been helpful, given that his previous tenures as CM have been incomplete.

This time, too, he fell short of completing his tenure.