B. Sriramulu

B. Sriramulu was born in Bellary, Karnataka on 8 August 1971 to B. Thimmappa, a railway employee and B Honnuramma, a housewife. He is the seventh child among four brothers and four sisters.

In the 1999 Lok Sabha elections Sriramulu worked as a local aide for Sushma Swaraj, who contested from Bellary Lok Sabha constituency, when she contested against the Congress giant Sonia Gandhi, to give a fierce fight and lose at a close margin.[1] With the support of Sriramulu and Janardhan Reddy, she later won the election from the same constituency in the next general elections.

In the 2008 Karnataka Legislative Assembly election he was elected from the Bellary constituency, where BJP had their first chance to form the government independently under the leadership of B. S. Yediyurappa. He later served as the Minister for health and family welfare for around 3 years in the Karnataka government. In September 2011, he resigned his post as the cabinet minister and also from the post of the MLA and he later quit the BJP, accusing and owing to alleged humiliation shouted out at his friend and mentor and jailed the former tourism minister Gali Janardhan Reddy for acquiring illegal wealth from various sources without documentation.[2]

Subsequently, with much competition and considering it to be a prestige he contested as an Independent candidate again from the Bellary Rural constituency and also won.[3] He then floated a regional party, Badavara Shramikara Raithara Congress or BSR Congress.[4] He also announced that his party is going to contest from all the constituencies in the 2013 Karnataka Legislative Assembly election. Though his party did not manage to win many of the seats, it gave a major setback to BJP, by dividing the vote share mainly in the Hyderabad-Karnataka region, and shut the seat share to only 40 seats for the BJP.[5]

After his party faced the election defeat in 2013, he decided to merge his party with the BJP, saying that he and his party are keen to work, to bring Narendra Modi to power in the 2014 Indian general elections. In March 2014 he again joined BJP and contested Lok Sabha election from Bellary where he slidingly won the seat[6]

He is BJP Karnataka, state vice-president. B. Sriramulu was health, tourism Bellary district minister in the Yeddyurappa government.

In 2018, Karnataka assembly elections, Sriramulu contested from Molkalmuru and Badami. He won Molkalmuru, by a margin of 40,000 odd votes, bit lost the Badami seat by 1500 votes to the former chief minister Siddaramaiah. [7]

On 27 July 2018, Sriramulu called for a separate state for North Karnataka due to alleged "injustice" in that part of the state.[8] After the coalition government led by H. D. Kumaraswamy lost its majority, paving the way to BJP to form the government he was inducted as a minister into the cabinet. He serves as Minister of Health and Family Welfare in the government.

• B. Sriramulu - Health and Family Welfare Department excluding Medical Education at the Karnataka Legislative Assembly