The biggest rags-to-riches story starts with the sons of a police constable criss-crossing the dusty Bellary roads in early 1990s on a rickety two-wheeler.
Sons of an ordinary police constable, the Gali Reddy brothers — Karunakara, Janardhana and Somashekar — have come a long way from their humble childhood.
While the first two rose to become cabinet ministers, Somashekar even now enjoys a cabinet minister’s status as the chairman of the Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF).
Former health minister B Sriramulu is seen as part of the extended family. Janardhana is seen as the main brain behind the rapid expansion of the brothers’ mining empire and successful foray into politics.
The biggest of the rags-to-riches story in the state started when the Reddy brothers criss-crossed the dusty Bellary roads in early 1990s on a two-wheeler as they attempted to establish and run a non-banking financial institution Ennoble Savings and Investment India Pvt Ltd.
Faced with complaints of fraud and cheating to the tune of Rs200 crore, the company wound up in 1998. With the same logo, the brothers opened another finance company called ‘Ennoble India’.
Soon they were behind another endeavour; a Kannada daily newspaper that went by the name Eenamma Kannada Nadu.
As their business empire began spreading tentacles, the Reddy brothers took over the cable network of the entire Bellary city.
Soon the Reddys’ clout caught the attention of other bigwigs of Bellary district. Congress leader M Diwakar Babu was the first to see red in the rise of Reddys.
The kidnapping of a girl in those days became a bone of contention between Babu and the Reddys. Sriramulu was then a prominent henchman of Babu. Reddys won over Sriramulu to their side.
Determined to chalk out an independent course, the Reddy brothers soon joined the BJP, which was then a marginal force in the district.
Besides his varied business interests, Janardhana had also gained some popularity in the district as he was running a residential school for spastic children since 1989.
The 1999 Lok Sabha polls saw the real emergence of Reddy brothers. As Congress chief Sonia Gandhi battled it out against the BJP’s Sushma Swaraj for the Bellary seat, they vigorously campaigned for Swaraj.
The BJP leader lost, but the doors of fortune opened for the Reddys. To their luck Gandhi quit the Bellary seat, preferring to retain Amethi from where too she had won.
The Bellary voters felt let down, making the Reddys’ task of winning them over to their side and that of the BJP easier.
Swaraj helped them in no small measure.
Till she fell out with them earlier this year, Swaraj kept her promise of not abandoning Bellary. She regularly visited their residence for the annual Varamahalakshmi Vrata.
That provided a sort of tailor-made platform for the Reddys to organise the function in a grand scale.
But real money started pouring in when they ventured into ore mining with a Rs50 lakh investment just ahead of the boom triggered by Beijing Olympics and feverish infrastructure works taken up by China.
They obtained the lease to Obulapuram mines in Andhra Pradesh. At the peak of the boom, iron ore was fetching almost Rs5,000 per tonne and they were mining millions of tonnes a year.
Their annual earning ran into thousands of crores of rupees.
The bikes and mopeds made way for luxury cars and helicopters.
There were also reports that the brothers heli-hopped to Bangalore to dine at their favourite joints. Janardhana’s Rolls Royce Phantom costing a whopping for Rs4.5 crore made headlines.
When BS Yeddyurappa created history on May 30, 2008 by bringing the first BJP government to power in south India, the victory was credited as much to Reddys’ money power as to people’s power.
As Yeddyurappa had a shaky start with just 110 MLAs, again it was Janardhana Reddy who played the key role in bringing stability to the government by driving the ‘Operation Lotus’.
But soon Yeddyurappa and Reddys fell apart and their oneupmanship game only ended up in ruining both sides and hastened their decline.
Once the illegal mining began drawing the attention of the authorities, the Reddys began to feel the pinch. The strength of their copter fleet came down to one. Their air travel time dwindled.
The death of Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Rajashekara Reddy, who had close business association with the Reddys, changed the fortunes of the Bellary brothers overnight.
The Andhra Pradesh government ordered a CBI probe against the Reddys on charges of illegal mining in 2009, which has now caught up with Janardhana and resulted in his arrest.
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