Ballari clash: Violence more a continuation than aberration in this ‘republic’

Police personnel stand guard outside the residence of Gali Janardhan Reddy in Ballari following the clash and firing incident on January 1.
| Photo Credit:
SRIDHAR KAVALI

The violent clash late on Thursday between supporters of Ballari MLA Nara Bharath Reddy and Gangavati MLA Gali Janardhan Reddy, which claimed the life of a young Congress activist Rajashekhar, was not an aberration.

It was a grim reminder of Ballari’s distinctive political culture, shaped by factional loyalties, inherited rivalries and a relentless struggle for dominance that has defined this mining-rich district for decades.

Ballari’s politics has long existed in a universe of its own, detached from the relatively placid rhythms of Karnataka’s mainstream political culture.

In many ways, it resembles the neighbouring Kurnool, Anantapur, Kadapa, and Chittoor districts of Rayalaseema in Andhra Pradesh, where politics is marked by intense factionalism.

Family rivalries, personalised enmities and the routine use of force have long been part of political grammar here, celebrated and normalised in several Telugu films.

Many of the district’s dominant political families are Telugu-speaking, with roots across the border.

Mining wealth

If Rayalaseema culture provided the temperament, Ballari’s mineral wealth supplied the muscle. The district sits atop some of India’s richest mineral deposits, including vast iron ore reserves that account for nearly a quarter of the country’s known stock, besides manganese, red oxide, copper, lead, limestone and granite. These riches, which could have made Ballari one of Karnataka’s most prosperous regions, has instead enriched a handful of powerful families and entrenched factional dominance.

Across party lines, Ballari’s political heavyweights have either been miners themselves or deeply enmeshed in the mining economy. Party affiliations have remained fluid, but the sources of money and muscle strikingly constant.

Elections in Ballari are therefore fought on a scale and with an intensity rarely seen elsewhere in rural Karnataka. Money flows freely, and the display of force becomes an appeal for votes. Campaigns involve convoys of high-end SUVs packed with armed supporters.

Mining boom

The apogee of this model came during the mining boom of the late 2000s, when Mr. Janardhan Reddy and his brothers’ grip over politics, administration and the local economy was so complete that Ballari came to be described as the “Ballari Republic”.

The 2008 Assembly elections and the 2009 Lok Sabha polls were held at a time when iron ore extraction was at its peak, catapulting the brothers to unprecedented influence.

The BJP’s emergence as the single largest party in 2008, with 110 seats in a 222-member Assembly, owed much to the organisational and financial muscle centred in Ballari.

Falling just short of a majority, the party crossed the halfway mark through a controversial strategy called “Operation Lotus”, in which legislators from rival parties were induced to resign, contest byelections on BJP ticket and return to the House. Mr. Janardhan Reddy played a pivotal role in engineering the manoeuvre that installed South India’s first BJP government, led by B.S. Yediyurappa.

That dominance, however, proved unsustainable. A series of illegal mining cases brought the boom to a sudden halt, and judicial intervention, including Supreme Court restrictions, barred Mr. Janardhan Reddy from entering Ballari district for over a decade. His prolonged absence weakened his grip on the local political machinery. Younger leaders, most notably Mr. Bharath Reddy, consolidated their bases.

A turning point

The 2023 Assembly elections marked a symbolic turning point. Mr. Bharath Reddy’s emphatic victory over Gali Lakshmi Aruna, Mr. Janardhan Reddy’s wife, was widely seen as a generational shift in Ballari’s power structure.

A few days before the announcement of the Sandur byelection in November 2024, the Supreme Court lifted the long-standing restrictions that had kept him out of Ballari district for nearly 13 years. The timing of Mr. Janardhan Reddy’s return proved politically explosive.

Though formally a contest between the Congress and the BJP, the bypoll turned into a high-stakes proxy war between two powerful mining barons, Labour Minister Santosh Lad and Mr. Janardhan Reddy. It ended in a clear setback for Mr. Janardhan Reddy, as the Lad-backed Congress candidate E. Annapurna defeated the BJP nominee.

Against this backdrop, Thursday’s violent clash, involving firearms, appears less a sudden breakdown of law and order than a continuation of a long and troubled political tradition where factional rivalries have rarely remained confined to rhetoric or ballot boxes.

Published – January 03, 2026 07:51 pm IST