Shantharama Budna Siddi became the first lawmaker from the Siddi (tribal) community, with Karnataka Governor Vajubhai Vala nominating him to the Karnataka Legislative Council, on Wednesday, along with four others.
Siddi (social service), Talwar Sabanna (education), Adagur H. Vishwanath (literature), C.P. Yogishwar (art) and Bharathi Shetty (social work) were nominated to the Upper House for their contribution to the society.
After the surprise nominations to the Rajya Sabha, where party workers were preferred to senior leaders, the BJP has once again surprised all by its choice of candidates to the 75-member legislative council.
Shantharama Siddi (55), a BA Economics graduate is the first degree holder in Siddi community, an ethnic group believed to be descendants of Bantu people of East Africa who were brought to India as indentured slaves. The community settled across Uttara Kannada, Belagavi and Dharwad districts in the state some 400 years ago. Shantharama is a RSS worker, who has been serving the Vanavasi Kalyana Karnataka (VKK) since 1989. He has served as a member of the Western Ghats Taskforce constituted by the Karnataka government.
Sabanna (56), economics professor at the Rani Chennamma University, Belagavi, belongs to one of the backward (OBC - Koli) communities.
Vishwanath (70), a former minister, is one of the three JDS MLAs who quit the party during the mass rebellion of the Congress MLAs in 2019, that led to the collapse of the JDS-Congress coalition government.
The Kuruba leader from the Mysore region had quit as the JDS state president before resigning as the MLA. He was disqualified by the then speaker under the anti-defection law. In the bypolls that followed, Vishwanath failed to retain his seat (Hunsur) on a BJP ticket and lost his chance to be inducted into the Yediyurappa cabinet.
Former minister C.P. Yogeshwar (56), a Vokkaliga leader from Channapatna and a partyhopper, got elected as independent MLA in 1999. He switched to the Congress party, then to BJP, Samajwadi Party and back to the Congress. In 2017, he joined the BJP, but failed to retain the seat in the 2018 assembly polls. His nomination to the Council is an acknowledgement of his efforts to install the BJP government in the state.
Bharathi Shetty is a former MLC, who is currently BJP's Mahila Morcha state president.
