K. Yadav Shetty, is the CPI(M) candidate for Mangalore Lok Sabha constituency comprising of the coastal district of Dakshina Kannada in Karnataka state. He is presently member of Dakshina Kannada District Secretariat of the Party. Shetty began his public life as a DYFI activist, at the age of 19, and became Dakshin Kannada District Secretary in 1991. He later went on to become its President also. Associated with the working class movement in the district, Shetty worked among the beedi workers in Mangalore and later organized the Panchayat workers in the district. He is now guiding them as District President of Panchayat Workers Union and as a member of the District Committee of CITU. He is now leading the peasants and agricultural workers in the adjoining Moodabidre taluka as Secretary of Dakshina Kannada district committee of Karnataka Prantha Raita Sangha, affiliated to AIKS. In 1984, Shetty was elected to the Mandal Panchayat in Kannur and continued for three consecutive terms. He was also elected as a member of Bajalu Gram Panchayat for two terms. He actively participated in many of the movements launched by the Party and agrarian mass organisations like on the issue of house-sites for agricultural workers and poor peasants, for remunerative prices for areca-nut growers etc. He mobilized the Panchayat workers of the district into struggles on their demands of minimum wage, dearness allowance, withdrawal of the requirement of a promotion test for eligible employees etc. Apart from participating and leading struggles of the working people, Shetty strived to mobilize people against the communal menace haunting the district since the last two decades. In 1993, he played a prominent role in organizing a Human Chain and building Manavataa Vedike, as a forum for restoring communal harmony and peace that was grievously threatened in the wake of demolition of Babri Masjid. When communal elements subjected two Muslim youth to inhuman attacks in Udupi, another important coastal town, he mobilized a mammoth protest demonstration in Mangalore. He also co-ordinated the series of protest demonstrations against the heinous murders of two youth activists, Bhaskar Kumble and Srinivas Bajal by communal elements.