Who is B S Yeddyurappa? A timeline of his rise politics

B S Yeddyurappa will take oath as the 23rd Chief Minister of Karnataka. Incidentally he is taking oath as the CM for the third time. In 2007, he was sworn as the CM, but the government lasted only 7 days as the JD(S) refused to transfer power.

In 2008 Yeddyurappa was sown in as CM and ran the government for 3 years and 62 days before the Lokayukta report on illegal mining came out and he was forced to resign.
Bookanakere Siddalingappa Yeddyurappa was born on February 27 1943 at Bookanakere in K.R.Pet taluk of Mandya district.

His parents were Siddalingappa and Puttathayamma. He was named after the presiding deity of a Shaivite temple built by the saint Siddalingeshwara at Yediyur in Tumkuru district.

His mother died when he was four. He completed his Pre-University College education from PES college, Mandya. In 1965, he was appointed as a first-division clerk in the social welfare department but he quit the job and moved to Shikaripura where he joined as a clerk at Veerabhadra Shastri's Shankar rice mill.

In 1967, Yeddyurappa married Mythradevi, the daughter of the rice mill owner. He later set up a hardware shop in Shivamogga. Yeddyurappa has two sons, Raghavendra and Vijayendra and three daughters, Arunadevi, Padmavati and Umadevi.
In 2004, his wife died after falling into a sump while drawing water.

Yeddyurappa was associated with the RSS since his college days. He was appointed as Karyavaha (Secretary) of the Sangh's Shikaripur unit in 1970. In 1972, he was elected to the Shikaripura Town Municipality and was also appointed as the President of the Taluk unit of the Jana Sangh.

In 1975, he was elected President of the Town Municipality of Shikaripura. He was imprisoned during the Emergency in India and lodged in the Bellary and Shimoga jails. In 1980, he was appointed President of the Shikaripura taluk unit of the BJP and later went on to become the president of BJP's Shimoga district unit in 1985. In 1988, he became the State President of the BJP in Karnataka.

He was first elected to the lower house of the Karnataka Legislature in 1983 and has since represented the Shikaripura constituency six times. He has been a member of the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, Twelfth and Thirteenth Legislative Assemblies (lower house) of Karnataka. Following the 1994 state assembly elections, he became the Leader of Opposition in the Karnataka Legislative Assembly.

In 1999, he lost the elections but was nominated by the BJP to become a member of the legislative council (upper house) of Karnataka. He was re-elected in 2004 and became the Leader of Opposition in the Karnataka Legislative Assembly during the chief ministership of Dharam Singh.

His first stint in power when he helped was Janata Dal (Secular) leader H. D. Kumaraswamy to bring down the coalition government headed by Dharam Singh and form an alternative government with BJP. An agreement was made between the JD(S) and BJP, which specified that H. D. Kumaraswamy would be the Chief Minister for the first 20 months, after which Yeddyurappa would become the Chief Minister for the remaining 20 months. Yeddyurappa became the Deputy Chief Minister as well as the finance minister in Kumaraswamy's Government.

In October 2007, when it was Yeddyurappa's turn to become Chief Minister, Kumaraswamy refused to relinquish his post. This forced Yeddyurappa and all the ministers from his party to resign and on 5 October, the BJP formally withdrew the support to the Kumaraswamy government.

In Karnataka's 2008 Assembly elections, Yeddyurappa contested from Shikaripura against former Chief Minister S. Bangarappa of the Samajwadi Party. The Indian National Congress and JD(S) backed Bangarappa, but despite this, Yeddyurappa won the seat by a margin of more than 45,000 votes.

He also led the BJP to a historic victory and took oath of office as Chief Minister on 30 May 2008.

However, the Karnataka Lokayukta investigating the illegal mining case submitted its report indicting Yeddyurappa for illegally profiteering from land deals in Bangalore and Shimoga and also in connection with the illegal iron ore export scam in Bellary, Tumkur and Chitradurga districts of Karnataka. Following much pressure from the BJP central leadership he quit as CM.

He resigned from his position as Member of Legislative Assembly and primary membership of Bharatiya Janata Party on 30 November 2012, and formally launched the Karnataka Janata Paksha.

In November 2013, it was announced that he was considering an unconditional return to the BJP. On 2 January 2014 he announced merger with BJP ahead of 2014 Lok Sabha elections. He won from the Shimoga seat of Karnataka in the Indian general election, 2014 by a margin of 363,305 votes.

In 2011 he was jailed for corruption. The Karnataka High-court in 2015 set aside this order, thereby quashing the cases against him. After the high court quashed former governor H R Bhardwaj's sanction to prosecute BS Yeddyurappa, a special Lokayukta court struck down four other FIRs against him. The Karnataka High Court had set aside the sanction given by then Governor HR Bhardwaj for his prosecution in several cases of alleged illegal de-notification of land, and asked the Governor to look into it.