Amit Shah avoids sharing dais with Reddys?

Ballari: In a furious attempt to distance himself from the Reddy brothers after the Congress stepped up a blistering campaign on social media to shame the BJP for giving seven BJP tickets to the extended Reddy family, allegedly involved in a Rs 50,000 crore mining scam, BJP national president Amit Shah on Friday abruptly cancelled his rally in Ballari district.

Somashekhar Reddy, BJP’s Ballari city candidate and brother of former minister Gali Janardhana Reddy, was personally supervising the preparations for the rally.

Sources said that mine baron Janardhana Reddy, accused of illegal mining of iron ore, has also been instructed to conduct all his electioneering away from media scrutiny. He is barred from entering the district under his bail conditions.

Taken by surprise by the cancellation of Mr Shah’s visit, BJP district chief  Channabasavanagowda said, “We had put up his posters and party flags. We don’t know why the rally was cancelled.”

Sources said Mr  Shah, who had in March declared that the BJP had nothing to do with Janardhana Reddy, may have developed cold feet over sharing a dais with the Reddy brothers and their close associates at the rally after he was seen with Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan when Reddy associate Boya Sriramulu filed his nominations from Badami last week.

Dismissing speculation that Mr Shah scrapped the Ballari visit to avoid being seen in public with the Reddys, BJP leaders claimed Mr Shah cancelled his Ballari rally as he was busy with party workers in Bengaluru.

In fact, skipping Ballari altogether, the BJP national president arrived at Koppal in the afternoon and held a meeting with local leaders over the strategy to win five key seats here, before addressing rallies at Kukanoor in Yalaburga and in Gangavati.

BJP’s state president and the party’s chief ministerial candidate B.S. Yeddyurappa invited attacks from the ruling Congres when he declared that  he had pardoned the Reddy brothers “in the interest of the state”.

Chief minister Siddaramaiah, who has made the return of the Reddys to the BJP fold an election issue, said, “The Reddy brothers are the biggest criminals in the history of Karnataka. They looted the state with impunity. The BJP has once again embraced them. They have got seven nominations. Yeddyur-appa’s own son has not got the party ticket.”

Although BJP leaders argue that Janardhana Reddy is not a star campaigner for the party and is hitting the road on his own to back his friends, party insiders admit that the inclusion of the Reddy brothers is a desperate move to win votes in their old strongholds.

“The party’s strategy is to get the Reddy brothers in, but distance the national leaders from them,” they explain.

Janardhana Reddy, the alleged kingpin of the mining mafia, has been leading the BJP campaign in central Karnataka districts, denting the saffron party’s efforts to build an “anti-corruption” campaign against the ruling Congress.