Sushma Swaraj’s Lok Sabha campaign in Ballari saw beginning of BJP’s rise in Karnataka

BENGALURU: Former external affairs minister and senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, who passed away late on Tuesday, had a strong Karnataka connection. It all began in 1999 when she contested Lok Sabha elections against Sonia Gandhi from Ballari. Sonia was making her electoral debut, but the contest in the mineral-rich district in North Karnataka was a fiery one and soon became a battle between the ‘swadeshi beti’ and ‘videshi bahu’.
Although Sonia, who also contested from Amethi in Uttar Pradesh in that election, defeated Sushma by 56,000 votes, Sushma, an ace orator and campaigner, won the hearts of the people of Ballari in particular and Karnataka in general. The highdecibel campaign in Ballari drew the nation's attention as Sushma, who had gained a working knowledge of Kannada within a month, drew huge crowds during her campaign as she spoke the local language quite fluently.
She was showered with so much affection that she made it a point to visit the district every year to celebrate Varamahalakshmi festival, which incidentally falls on Friday this year. Although Ballari was a citadel of the Congress since the first general election in 1952, the battle was a close one. Though Sonia gave up the Ballari seat, her contest with Sushma remains etched as one of the fiery electoral battles in Indian history.
The nomination of both Sonia and Sushma was dramatic and filled with suspense. Sushma’s name was mooted by late Ramakrishna Hegde and she was accompanied by late HN Ananth Kumar and current Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu when she filed her nomination.
Sushma’s campaign laid the foundation for a tectonic shift as the BJP breached the Congress citadel in 2004. Her campaign was managed by the three Reddy brothers, who later fell out with her after G Janardhana Reddy was indicted in the illegal mining scam. She eventually cut ties with them and stopped visiting Ballari.
CM BS Yediyurappa, former PM HD Deve Gowda, former CMs Siddaramaiah and HD Kumaraswamy, Congress leader DK Shivakumar and Union minister Sadananda Gowda, among others, paid tribute to Sushma.