Shobha Karandlaje

Shobha Karandlaje is a famous Indian Politician born in Puttur, Dakshin Kannada (Karnataka), India. As a rare example of a woman inducted into the Indian Government, she was one of the Union Ministers. Her supporters fondly call her by the name of “ Shobhakka." Her father is late Shri Monappa Gowda, and her mother is Smt. Poovakka. She is a Vice-President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Karnataka, also currently serving the post of the Minister of State and Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare in the second term of Prime Minister 'Narendra Modi’s government. Furthermore, she represents the Udupi Chikmagalur constituency in the Lok Sabha.

Shobha is a Post-Graduate in Sociology and Social work; she completed her MA in Sociology along with Master of Social Work from Open University, Mysore, and School of Social Work Rohini Nilaya, Mangalore University. She joined the Rashtriya SwayamSevak Sangh at a tender age. She was among the full-time women workers who decided to join Politics, initially inspired by RSS. In 1996, she joined Bharatiya Janata Party. She got support from Senior BJP leaders during her initial years, one of them being former MLC Ramachandra Gowda. Gowda used to take her to public events and believed she has a huge role in strengthening the leadership of BJP in Karnataka.

She first got elected as the Secretary of Karnataka unit in 2000 and then as MLC in 2004; after four years, she got a ticket to contest in the Legislative Polls, where she became an MLA for the first time. After serving BJP for a few years, in 2008, she was reappointed as MLC, eventually leading to her appointment as the Minister for Rural Development and Panchayat Raj in the central government. She got praised immensely for her work. However, she resigned from the Cabinet to resolve the differences among the factions within the party based on a compromise formula. In Jagdish Shettar's leadership, reappointed as the Energy Minister, Shobha proved her potential. Along with this, she was also in charge of Food and Civil Supplies.

Shobha was the only woman representative in the Cabinet back then. As a loyal confidant of BS Yediyurappa Bookanakere Siddalingappa Yediyurappa is a Kannada >> Read More... , she quit BJP membership to join Karnataka Janata Party (KJP) but later lost in the 2013 Assembly polls. Eventually, she rejoined BJP when KJP merged with BJP. She contested the Indian General Elections in 2014 and 2019, and she won both times by a large margin, even improving in the elections of 2019 compared to the General Elections of 2014.