New Delhi, May 4 (Agencies): The Supreme Court on Friday turned down mining baron Gali Janardhana Reddy’s plea to be allowed to enter Karnataka’s Bellary district to campaign for his brother G. Somashekar Reddy, a Bharatiya Janata Party candidate in the May 12 Assembly elections.

A bench of Justices A.K. Sikri and Ashok Bhushan refused to ease the ban on Janardhana Reddy’s entry into Bellary, which has been in place since 2015.

Janardhana Reddy, also a BJP leader, is out on bail in a case relating to illegal mining of iron ore in Bellary and Anantapur. He was jailed in 2009, and was granted bail by the Supreme Court in January 2015 but was barred from entering Bellary.

On Thursday, B.S. Yeddyurappa, the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate, had told a rally in Shimoga that the party had asked him to seek the cooperation of Janardhana Reddy, whose brother Somasekhar has the best chance of winning the Bellary seat.

Janardhana is not a candidate, but the BJP leadership had asked the state unit to seek his help in some districts, Yeddyurappa had said.

BJP president Amit Shah, meanwhile, skipped Bellary last week when he was on the campaign trail, apparently because he did not want to be seen on the same stage as Janaradhana Reddy’s brothers, who are also accused in the Bellary mining scam.

Shah had initially distanced itself from the Reddy brothers, but the party later gave tickets to Somashekhara and Karunakara, two brothers of Janardhana.

Sriramulu, seen as close to the Reddy brothers, has emerged as the face of the BJP's campaign to seek the votes of the scheduled tribes. He belongs to the Valmiki community, a scheduled tribe. Sriramulu is also the lone BJP leader contesting from two constituencies.

The Reddy brothers had been the pointmen of the BJP before a 2011 Lokayukta report on illegally mining indicted them.