Bookanakere Siddalingappa Yeddyurappa is the 25th Chief Minister of Karnataka and was sworn in on 30 May 2008. He is popularly known as the friend of the farmers. He belongs to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and represents Shikaripura in the Karnataka legislative assembly. He became the Chief Minister of Karnataka after the BJP's success in the 2008 Karnataka assembly election. He was also briefly chief minister in November 2007 before the coalition government with Janata Dal (Secular) collapsed. He is the first person from the BJP to become the chief minister of a south Indian state.

Yeddyurappa was born on February 27th, 1943, in the village of Bookanakere in Mandya district of Karnataka. His father Siddalingappa and mother Puttathayamma belonged to the Lingayat community. He was named after the presiding deity of a Shaivite temple built by the saint Siddalingeshwara at Yediyur in Tumkur district of Karnataka. He completed his education with a degree. In 1965, he was appointed first-division clerk in the social welfare department but instead shifted to Shikaripur where he joined as a clerk at Veerabhadra Shastri's Shankar rice mill. He later set up a hardware shop in Shimoga.

He worked as a Sangha Karyavaha during 1970-72. In 1972 at the age of 29, he entered public life by becoming the taluk president of Janasangh in Shikaripur. From 1974 to 1976 he served as the director of Veerasaiva cooperative society. In 1975, he was elected as the town municipality member of Shikaripur. In 1977, he became the municipality president and was popular among the public because of his people oriented out look. He was also elected as the president of the Janata party the same year.

During August 1987, he traveled all over Shikaripur taluk on a bicycle to survey the drought situation and visited all the villages to get a first hand view of the drought. He has been elected to the assembly four times successively- between 1983 and 1994. He entered the Karnataka legislative assembly for the first time by winning in the 1983 elections. This election proved to be a turning point in his public life.

In 1985, he was also elected as the BJP President for Shimoga district and worked for the party's growth. He was elected to the assembly for the second time in 1985. He worked as Karnataka state BJP president during 1988. He was elected to the Karnataka assembly for the third time in 1989.

From Basavanakalyan to Banavasi, he has conducted several meetings to familiarize the BJP with rural Karnataka. He has undertaken the Save Gramarajya Padayatra from Shimoga to Bangalore to force the government to hold panchayat elections. To urge the government to write off farmers loans he travelled across the entire state three times beginning from Basavana Bagewadi. In these trips, he made over 1000 public speeches.

Yediyurappa has worked hard to endear the BJP to farmers and labourers. He became the state BJP President for the 2nd time during 1998-99. He also worked as national secretary of the BJP during 1992. He was elected to the assembly for the fifth time in 2004 and functioned as the Opposition leader from June 2004 to February 2006.