BSY hand in Jagadish Shettar’s change of heart, in full U-turn, returns to BJP thanking it for ‘responsibilities in past’

NINE MONTHS after expressing deep disappointment over how he had been treated in the BJP, influential Lingayat leader and former Karnataka Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar left the Congress to return to the BJP on Thursday.

“The party gave me a lot of responsibilities in the past. Due to some issues, I went to the Congress. In the last nine months, there were a lot of discussions. Also, BJP workers asked me to come back to the party. Yediyurappaji and (Karnataka BJP president B S) Vijayendraji also wanted me to come back to the BJP. I am rejoining the party with the belief that Narendra Modi ji has to become the prime minister again,” he said after joining the BJP.

His rejoining is seen as another feather in the cap of the BJP’s foremost Lingayat leader and former CM B S Yediyurappa, who is once again in full charge of the party state unit.

Shettar had quit the BJP in April last year after he was denied a ticket. At the time, he had said: “I am totally disappointed. I have worked for the party for more than 30 years and have built it. They could have intimated to me two or three months ago, and I would have accepted it. But with a few days before filing the nominations, I was intimated not to contest. I had already started campaigning in the constituency.”

However, Shettar had failed to win from his bastion of Hubbali Dharwad on a Congress ticket in the Assembly elections that followed.

Shettar’s departure had been a big loss for the BJP given his stature in the Lingayat community. He had led the party as CM at a turbulent time in 2012 when Yediyurappa had left to float his own outfit. He served as the BJP’s Leader of the Opposition from 2014 to 2018 under the previous Siddaramaiah-led government, and held various ministerial