Meet Arvind Limbavali, the custodian of Jyotiraditya’s flock in Bengaluru

Bengaluru: In late 2018, the BJP central leadership was in two minds over whether or not to bring down the JD(S)-Congress coalition government headed by H D Kumaraswamy. B S Yeddyurappa was raring to go get Òperation Lotus started, but BJP boss man Amit Shah had second thoughts.

Then, just before the Lok Sabha elections in May 2019, Yeddyurappa roped in a man to persuade the high command to get going.

The emissary won over the high command, and was entrusted the job of overseeing the operation to bring down the government and install the BJP. He was given a crack team to execute the task and the entire operation was carried out meticulously. Soon enough, Yediyurabba was the saddle as chief minister.

The man who did his bidding was Arvind Limbavali.

Today, he is in charge of the operation to corral 19 Congress legislators from Madhya Pradesh in a resort in Bengaluru, while Jyotiradity Scindia carries out his coup against Kamal Nath.

Limbavali, 53, is so skillful at managing horsetrading manouevres that the media here has been finding it difficult to track down exact the whereabouts of the herd of 19.

Hailing from Bagalkot district, Limbavali came to Bengaluru for do a civil engineering degree at BMS College of Engineering. Unlike his classmates, who went into careers as engineers, he became a pracharak of the RSS, travelling all over the country.

Arvind Limbavali has come a long way as the Sangh Parivar's Man Friday for crises and coups. First, he became a member of the Legislative Council and later chose to contest an election to the Assembly Mahadevapura in Bengaluru.

Limbavali started his association with the ABVP and went on to become its national secretary during 1992-1995. He was instrumental behind the `Save Campus' campaign spearheaded by the ABVP and also worked on the `Kashmir Chalo' agitation. He was one of the five-member team chosen from Karnataka for hoisting the Tricolor in Srinagar. (They were stopped at Udhampur).

After the ABVP stint, he turned into a full-time -racharak of the RSS and has been active in all the programmes of the RSS. Along with the top RSS leaders, he is also close to top BJP functionaries and he is one of the few leaders in Karnataka to have direct access to Amit Shah.

Limbavali was health and family welfare Minister during the earlier BJP government. He was poised to bag a ministry agains when Yeddyurappa took over as chief minister. However, a controversial private video of Limbavali was leaked on social media, much to the embarrassment of the BJP--as well as himself. Limbavali cried in the Assembly over the issue. Now that the issue has died down, Limbavali is all set to become a minister again during the next cabinet expansion, scheduled for next month, after the end of the ongoing budget session of the state.