It was close to a month ago that Gali Janardhan Reddy’s daughter’s wedding invitation first made news for the LCD screen that arrived in a box playing the video of the family walking out of a Bollywood set and into your retinas.
Twenty one-year-old Brahmani, a business management graduate, is getting married to Hyderabad industrialist Rajiv Reddy.
As the wedding inches nearer, reports now say that the Reddy extravaganza is one big PR exercise which is an indication of the mining baron’s return to politics. This is said to be a mere show of strength, and a pretty big one. Reports mention that anything between Rs 200 crore and Rs 550 crore has been spent for the wedding with the Vijayanagar empire being re-created at the Palace Grounds in Bengaluru.
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The BJP has reportedly asked its leaders to stay away from the ostentatious event though Yeddyurappa and Jagadish Shettar are likely to attend. Janardhan Reddy of the four Bellary brothers are said to be instrumental in bringing the BJP into power in Karnataka earlier and ruled the roost between 1999 and 2009.
Their economic power got him close to many ministers, some of whom hold Cabinet posts in the current government, including Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley. Jaitley had flown down to Karnataka in 2009 to pacify the brothers after they threatened to bring down the local government which they said was not pandering to their needs.
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Anti-corruption activists have pointed out that Reddy, who was jailed on illegal mining charges in 2011 and 2015, made about Rs 5,000 crore by the time and have accused the BJP of going easy on him.
