The 75-year-old Sheela refers to 57-year-old Shobha as ‘akka’ (elder sister). When asked why, Sheela says, "What Shobhakka has achieved is very rare for any woman. Politics is patriarchal, and for a woman to stay relevant and make a place for herself is a huge accomplishment, and I respect her for that. That's why I call her Shobhakka."

Many credit Shobha for building the BJP women’s wing in the coastal city; she was even asked to contest municipal elections in Manipal in 1996, which she declined. “She said it wasn’t the right time for her,” recalls Tingale Vikramarjuna Hegde, former general secretary of the Udupi BJP unit. “She had bigger ambitions at the time,” he adds.

Many don’t know about her days in the Rashtra Sevika Samiti. Those who knew Shobha back then say she was steeped in the Sangh’s ideology from the start but was careful to avoid the rabid Hindutva messaging in pursuit of a larger constituency. But she quickly transformed into one of the leading anti-minority voices in the BJP when she was left out in the cold by Yediyurappa and his clique. This rebranding as a Hindutva hardliner allowed her to shrug off the fact that Yediyurappa chose his sons over her.

“She’s a Sangh product. She worked in the Rashtra Sevika Samiti where she would counsel young women on the importance of Hindu culture and benefits of fasting, etc,” a former RSS leader from Dakshina Kannada tells TNM.

Then came the 1998 general elections where Shobha campaigned aggressively for the Udupi BJP candidate, Jayaram Shetty, and helped wrest the seat by defeating five time Udupi MP and Congress leader Oscar Fernandes.

Two years after being with the Mahila Morcha, Shobha decided to plunge into active politics. She was still a nobody, but veteran BJP leader AJ Kodgi, who was the Udupi BJP district president at the time, spotted Shobha's potential and recommended her as a full-time worker for the party. The same year she met BS Yediyurappa — the man who would have the largest impact on her political career — at Sankalpa Yatra, a poll campaign ahead of the 1999 Assembly election. Yediyurappa admired hard-working people, says a senior party functionary. “He was impressed by her attitude of never saying no, which earned her respect and brought her closer to the party leadership,” he says.

A Yediyurappa loyalist

“Shobha’s association with Yediyurappa got her the seat to the Legislative Council in 2004, despite strong opposition from within the ranks,” says a party insider. From there on, Shobha never looked back. She grew from strength to strength and became a close confidante of Yediyurappa. In the May 2008 Assembly elections, she was nominated from North Bengaluru's Yeshwantpur seat. However, some BJP workers refused to campaign for her since she was an "outsider" from the Dakshina Kannada region.

Despite the resistance from within the party, Shobha won the election and became the Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (RDPR) Minister. It was also the BJP's first victory in an Assembly election in south India, which further raised Yediyurappa's profile within the party and, by extension, Shobha’s.

According to party insiders, till 2009, senior leaders met Shobha first to ascertain Yediyurappa's mood. Yediyurappa made Shobha a part of his foreign travel entourage, and also made her in-charge of a key district like Mysuru. And as her closeness to the Chief Minister grew, so did the envy of her party colleagues.

Several senior ministers complained that the CM would ask officials to ‘run it past her’ before he signed a file. Shobha often held media briefings after Cabinet meetings, and there were allegations that no file would get cleared without her approval.

At this point, mining barons Janardhan Reddy and Karunakar Reddy, who had bought their way into political power, were claiming the support of two-thirds of all BJP legislators. The main accusation from the Reddy brothers was that Shobha was interfering in other ministries — an allegation she has denied.

The Reddy faction, along with the then-Speaker Jagadish Shettar – whom they were trying to promote as a replacement for Yediyurappa – went to New Delhi with their demand to replace the Karnataka Chief Minister. Yediyurappa only had the support of 17 MLAs out of the 117 that the BJP had in Karnataka, and Shobha was one of them. The first thing the rebels sought from the BJP's central leadership was Shobha's ouster from the government.

“They could not stand taking instructions from a woman,” a senior BJP leader tells TNM, “The power Shobha held within the government and in the BJP had hurt many male egos. And what better way to hurt Yediyurappa than to force him to remove his protege from the Cabinet?"

This ouster led to Yediyurappa to have a public meltdown. “God won't forgive me,” he declared as he let go of Shobha. And that moment in 2009 started the process of edging Shobha out of Karnataka politics, although a full move to Delhi came much later.

In 2010, Shobha was reinstated and given the Energy Ministry in the Karnataka government, becoming the first woman to handle the Energy portfolio in Karnataka. She also had additional charge of the Ministry of Food and Civil Supplies. Her comeback was a boss move, but it didn't last long.

In 2011, Yediyurappa left the BJP after being forced to resign as Chief Minister over corruption charges. He formed his own party, the Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP), ahead of the 2012 Assembly election in which the Congress came back to power. Shobha eventually joined him after resigning from her ministerial position and was made the working president of KJP.

Later, Shobha lost as a KJP candidate in the 2013 Assembly polls from RR Nagar in Bengaluru to S Suresh Kumar of the BJP. Yediyurappa called off his rebellion and returned to the BJP; Shobha followed him.

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