For the first time since 2004, the Karnataka assembly will miss the Reddy brothers of Bellary whose rags to riches saga that ended in a huge mining scam will haunt the BJP for a long time.
The most vocal of the siblings, G. Janardhana Reddy, a former Bharatiya Janata Party minister, has been locked up mostly since September 2011 in Hyderabad's Chanchalaguda jail and occasionally in Bangalore's Parappana Agrahara jail.
He faces illegal mining cases in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.
One of his brothers, G. Karunakara Reddy, who was also a minister in the BJP government headed by B.S. Yeddyurappa, Wednesday lost the assembly poll from Harapanahalli in the central Karnataka district of Davangere.
The other brother, G. Somashekara Reddy, chose not to contest the Sunday election as, he said, he was more interested in getting brother Janardhana out of jail than in fighting the poll".
The Reddy brothers, sons of a police constable in Andhra Pradesh, made the iron-rich Bellary their home and joined the BJP in 1999.
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