Former Karnataka deputy chief minister Laxman Savadi met with senior Congress figures on Friday in Bengaluru, including LoP Siddaramaiah and state unit president D K Shivakumar, just days after the BJP denied him a ticket. After the meeting, Shivakumar told the reporters that Savadi will formally join the old party on Friday night.Savadi, a current BJP MLC and three-time MLA from Athani, was defeated by Kumathalli in the 2018 elections (then in the Congress).Kumathalli was one of the defectors who assisted the BJP in 2019 in overthrowing the Congress-JD(S) coalition and establishing its own administration under B S Yediyurappa.
Savadi, a prominent member of the saffron party in Karnataka, served as the state’s eighth deputy chief minister and minister of transport in the fourth BS Yediyurappa ministry from 2019 to 2021.
After a video of him and his former colleague C. C. Patil allegedly watching pornographic videos on a mobile phone in the Karnataka Legislative Assembly surfaced in 2012, Savadi found himself at the centre of a controversy. Soon after the incident turned into a significant political controversy, Savadi resigned from his position as a minister.