On Sunday evening, soon after the Karnataka election results were in place, Goolihatti Shekhar, an Independent candidate from Hosadurga in the Chitradurga district in central Karnataka, was celebrating his surprise election victory when a fleet of SUVs and big cars caught up with him.

Within an hour of the election trends showing that the BJP would have to draw on the support of Independent MLAs to form the new government, the party’s chief power brokers, the iron-ore mining lords, the Reddy brothers from the neighbouring Bellary district, were rolling towards Bangalore gathering Independent MLAs.

The brothers—Gali Karunakar Reddy, Gali Janardhan Reddy and Gali Somashekhar Reddy—sons of a former police constable, had virtually delivered almost four districts of the state on a platter to the BJP and were not going to allow any slips between the cup and the lip.

The eldest brother, Karunakar Reddy, 46, a sitting MP from Bellary had contested the assembly polls from a neighbouring district and registered a victory, so had his youngest brother Somashekhar Reddy, 42, the former mayor of Bellary.

The family’s good friend and virtual fourth brother B Sriramulu had bagged Bellary Rural and his nephew Suresh Babu had won another of the Bellary seats.

The most talked about Reddy in Karnataka, Janardhan, 44, was already a sitting member of the Karnataka legislative council while an assortment of people connected to the Reddys had won from the neighboring districts.

The BJP-versus-Congress scorecard in the poll results for the constituencies in Bellary and three neighboring districts of Davangere, Gadag and Haveri where the Reddy brothers had focussed their energies for a BJP victory read 8-1, 6-2, 4-0 and 5-1 respectively—playing a crucial role in the overall BJP victory.

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