Gaali Janardhana Reddy, the fabulously rich mining baron arrested by the CBI in Bellary today, began life as the son of a police constable. Now in custody, he is considered the face of the mining mafia in Karnataka.
Bellary is too poor to have a commercial airport, but the Reddy brothers and other miners maintain their own runways and helipads in a district once considered godforsaken.
The miners also drive around in Audis and BMWs, cars you would think only the uber rich in Mumbai and Delhi could afford. Bellary district, hot, dusty and with no industry but mining, was buying the largest number of luxury cars in India some years ago, all thanks to the money miners were raking in.
The Telugu-speaking Janardhana Reddy, his two brothers, and his deputy Sriramulu allegedly masterminded illegal mining in the border district of Bellary till a couple of months ago, when adverse court orders and a Lokayukta report put an end to it. Before the Reddys got into mining, they used to run a chit fund business.
Janaradhana Reddy was the tourism and infrastructure minister in the Yeddyurappa cabinet. His brother Karunakara was the revenue minister. Somashekhara, the least visible of the three brothers, headed the Karnataka Milk Federation.
Janardhana Reddy is the CEO of Obalapuram Mining Company, which allegedly mined iron ore illegally in Karnataka, and exported it to China and elsewhere from ports in Andhra Pradesh. The BJP is now defending Janardhana Reddy, but he has always been a problem child. Much trouble seems in store for the party if it continues to defend the indefensible. Former Karnataka Lokayukta Santosh Hegde expects more arrests in Andhra Pradesh.
A few months after Yeddyurappa formed south India's first BJP government, the Reddy brothers locked up MLAs and threatened to bring down the government if their demands were not met. On the surface, the demands were innocent: more representation for their faction, and the dropping of Shobha Karandlaje, rumoured to be Yeddyurappa's significant other, from the cabinet. But the truth, insiders say, was that they wanted a free hand to run the mining racket in Bellary. They won that round, which possibly emboldened them to mine recklessly, destroy forests, and even erase the Karnataka-Andhra Pradesh border so that they could confuse law-enforcers on either side.
Although the Reddy brothers are prominent members of the BJP, they shared close links with Y S Rajashekhar Reddy of the Congress in Andhra Pradesh. Brahmani Steels, promoted by the two Reddy families in Kadapa in that state, was an ambitious project that wanted to take on the Mittals and the Tatas. The cross-party bonding came to an end when YSR died in a plane crash. On TV this morning, Jagan Reddy, YSR's son, angrily denied his family had anything to do with the Bellary Reddys.
In 1999, when few had heard of the Reddy brothers, they joined the BJP, and worked for Sushma Swaraj when she contested against Sonia Gandhi. The brothers referred to her as their mother, and posed with puja pictures that showed them sitting obediently under her benign gaze. Her patronage has, however, vanished. Earlier this year, she abandoned them when she found that their racket could wreck her prime ministerial chances.
When the BJP fell just short of a majority, the Reddy brothers notoriously poached MLAs in what came to be known as Operation Kamala. The BJP's central leadership was beholden to them for helping the party form its first ever government in the south, and in the process, lost its power to keep them in check.
How do the Reddys now find themselves in trouble? A committee appointed by the Supreme Court ordered a CBI inquiry into illegal mining. The CBI came into the picture that way, and not because, as the BJP alleges, the Congress masterminded it all. The investigators have taken Janardhana Reddy and his cousin Srinivasa Reddy to Hyderabad for questioning.
The Bellary region has other mining lords, too, and not all of them belong to the BJP. Many Congress leaders, such as Anil Lad, are in the mining business, and many minister allegedly own benami mines.
No comments:
Post a Comment