Bengaluru: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Tuesday expelled MLAs S.T. Somashekar and Arbail Shivaram Hebbar for six years for their “repeated violations of the party discipline”.
BJP central disciplinary committee member secretary Om Pathak signed off on the two expulsions, writing that the internal committee considered Somashekar and Hebbar’s responses to the show cause notice dated 25 March, 2025, and has “taken serious note of your repeated violations of the party discipline”.
Somashekar is the BJP MLA from Yeshvanthapura in Bengaluru, while Hebbar represents Yellapur constituency in Uttara Kannada district. Both were part of the 17 legislators who defected from the H.D. Kumaraswamy-led JD(S)-Congress coalition government and joined BJP, helping B.S. Yediyurappa became chief minister for a record fourth term.
Somashekar, Hebbar and several others who defected to BJP retained their seats in the December 2019 bypolls and were later given ministerial berths.
But the defectors, often referred to as the “Bombay Boys,” have since presented an ongoing challenge for BJP and its state leadership.
Their loyalty was always in question since most of them built their careers opposing BJP and its ideology. The party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah accorded special privileges to accommodate the defectors in Yediyurappa’s cabinet, shrinking the space for its own seniors that sowed seeds of discord over the years. On his part, Yediyurappa was accused of overlooking senior BJP leaders and favouring only his loyalists during his term as chief minister between 2019 and 2021.
Some of them were retained as cabinet ministers even after Basavaraj Bommai replaced Yediyurappa as chief minister.
In March, BJP issued show cause notices to three others, M.P. Renukacharya, Katta Subramanya Naidu and B.P. Harish, besides Somashekar and Hebbar. However, no action was taken against the other three, two of whom are staunch Yediyurappa supporters.
In March, the BJP expelled Basanagouda Patil Yatnal for his relentless attacks on the Yediyurappa family, particularly the former chief minister’s son B.Y. Vijayendra who is president of the Karnataka BJP.
Vijayendra Tuesday said that the state core committee too deliberated on the expulsions, and even pressured the party’s central leadership to act against the two legislators. “When BJP came to power, they [Somashekar and Hebbar] got several good opportunities. But they must have found it problematic to be in the Opposition and have repeatedly indulged in anti-party activities,” he told reporters in Bengaluru.
Somashekar voted in favour of Congress’s Ajay Maken in the 2024 Rajya Sabha elections, while Hebbar abstained. At the time, he had said he voted according to his “conscience”.
Most of the defectors are seen to be close to Siddaramaiah and have maintained contact with the chief minister despite switching parties.
Some like Ramesh Jarakiholi, the powerful legislator from Belagavi’s Gokak who is considered the catalyst of the defection drama, even led the clarion call to replace Vijayendra, alleging Yediyurappa family’s stranglehold over the state unit of the party.
Jarkiholi is a key member of the faction seen to be led by Yatnal, calling for Vijayendra’s ouster.
A.H. Vishwanath, then JD(S) state president, was also among legislators who defected to BJP in 2019. He has since pulled up BJP on several occasions, sometimes on the floor of the Rajya Sabha of which he is a member. In September 2022, he had termed BJP’s decision to push the anti-conversion bill through the state legislature as “ridiculous”.
Passed by a voice vote at the time, the Karnataka Protection of Right to Freedom of Religion Bill, 2022, was revoked when the Congress returned to power in the state.
Of the 17 defectors, most lost out in the 2023 assembly elections.
Sudhakar, Pratapgouda Patil, Mahesh Kumathalli, Basavanagouda Patil, Shrimant Patil, N. Nagaraj (MTB) and K.C. Narayangowda unsuccessfully contested on a BJP ticket in the 2023 assembly elections. BJP fielded Anand Singh’s son, Siddararth, from Vijayanagara but he lost. R. Shanker unsuccessfully contested on an NCP ticket from Ranibennur.
While Sudhakar was elected to the Lok Sabha in 2024, the others haven’t fared as well.
Munirathna, the four-time MLA from Bengaluru’s Rajarajeshwari Nagar, is currently out on bail in cases where he faces charges of rape, orchestrating a gang rape, election fraud, attempting to honeytrap other legislators and even trying to inject the Leader of the Opposition, R. Ashoka, with HIV.
Deputy CM and state Congress president D.K. Shivakumar took exception to BJP’s decision not to expel Munirathna. “S.T. Somashekar and Shivaram Hebbar have not raped anyone in the Vidhana Soudha when he was in office. There are so many FIRs are there [against Munirathna], so many investigations have been conducted and there are some legislators who made an AIDS injection to the opposition leader and tried to trap Yediyurappa ji, they are not taking action on them. I am very happy that they are keeping all those ‘Navarathnas’ with them,” Shivakumar told reporters in Bengaluru Tuesday.
M.T.B. Nagaraj and Vishwanath are members of the legislative council, while Roshan Baig from Bengaluru’s Shivajinagar did not contest the 2023 assembly elections.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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