S Balaraj: BJP's Surprise Pick For Chamarajanagar Seat (image:facebook.com/ S Balaraj)When incumbent MP V Srinivas Prasad announced his retirement after five decades of political career, there were many aspirants to the Chamarajanagar Lok Sabha seat. It includes Dr. NS Mohan and B Harshavardhan, two of V Srinivas Prasad’s sons-in-laws, and G Narayanaswamy, director of the National Academy of Customs Indirect Taxes and Narcotics (NACIN). However, in a surprise move, the BJP leadership has fielded former Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa’s admirer S Balaraj from the Chamarajanagar constituency.
The 58-year-old Balaraj earlier served as a legislator representing the Kollegal assembly segment in the Chamarajanagar district. He is a native of Maddur village in the district.
He began his political career in 1994 in Congress through his association with his political mentor, former Union Minister M Rajashekara Murthy. Balaraj was also close with former MP and former KPCC working president R Dhruvanarayana.
Balaraj’s debut political performance was in the early 1990s, when he got elected as director of the Taluk Agricultural Produce Co-operative Marketing Society. Subsequently, he became the vice president of the district Youth Congress of undivided Mysuru and then took the position of president of the Youth Congress of Chamarajanagar district after it was divided from Mysuru district.
Following his political mentor, Balaraj joined the BJP and, as its nominee, contested the Kollegal Assembly segment in 1999 and lost. In the 2004 Assembly poll, he won as an independent candidate, but his attempts at the 2008 polls were unsuccessful. In the 2009 by-elctiobs, he fielded on a JD(S) ticket but failed. In 2013, Balaraj joined Yediyurappa’s newly formed Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP) and contested unsuccessfully. After the polls, when KJP merged with the BJP, Balaraj returned to Congress but was denied tickets in the 2018 and 2023 elections. Disheartened, he joined the BJP, and as per the reports, the father-son duo of Yediyurappa-Vijayendra was instrumental in bringing him back into the BJP fold by promising a ticket in the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
The upcoming elections are his first contest in the Lok Sabha polls. Balaraj is confident of his victory and claims that his experience working for different political parties would give him an him an edge in the polls, the Times of India reports. Chamarajanagar is a SC reserved constituency.