In the 2008 Assembly elections, the BJP won eight of the total nine seats. Now, in 2023, the Congress won all five seats in Ballari and two seats in Vijayanagara district, which was recently carved out of Ballari. The BJP has been left with only one seat (Hadagali) in the united Ballari district.
Ballari had traditionally been a Congress stronghold. It was because of this safe home feeling that the Congress fielded Sonia Gandhi here in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections. With the BJP firebrand Sushma Swaraj jumping into the arena, Ballari saw a high-voltage electoral battle in which Ms. Sonia Gandhi finally won.
However, the district slipped into the BJP hands in the 2008 elections during the mining boom. Miner Gali Janardhan Reddy, along with his brothers Gali Somashekhar Reddy and Gali Karunakar Reddy and his close associate and Naik community leader B. Sriramulu, strengthened the party with their money and muscle power.
