Union minister Ananth Kumar, who passed away Monday, was an old political warhorse who never lost his Bengaluru (South) Lok Sabha constituency.
Bengaluru: Union minister for fertilizers and chemicals Ananth Kumar, 59, who passed away at a private hospital in Bengaluru Monday, was known as an “Invincible politician”.
He was known for his skillful administration and strategy-making, and those qualities were identified in him by former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who made him a minister in the union cabinet.
He served as the union minister for tourism and civil aviation at the time. Kumar was a protégé of the sidelined BJP patriarch L.K. Advani. It was his repute as an able administrator that reportedly got PM Narendra Modi to make him a minister despite the fact that he stood with his mentor Advani through his trying times in the party.
As the chemical and fertilizers minister, he fulfilled the NDA government’s promise of providing fertilizers to farmers at a subsidised rate.
He had become synonymous with the Bangalore-South constituency in Karnataka, from where he won six times in a row.
Along with his wife, Kumar ran several charitable programmes, Adamya Chetana being one of them. Adamya Chetana helped nearly 2 lakh children get hot nutritious food daily, with the minister also encouraging tree plantation drives across the state.
Ananth Kumar’s constituency has always been a prestigious seat and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has never lost a single election from there after 1991, when K. Venkatagiri Gowda wrested the constituency from former chief minister R. Gundu Rao.
In 1996, when Ananth Kumar contested from the constituency, he defeated Gundu Rao’s wife Varalakshmi. In 2014, he defeated UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani, who was contesting on a Congress ticket, in an election seen as a clash of the titans.
Earlier this year, after the BJP lost the Jayanagara assembly by-election to the Congress, party leaders in the state said this would not have happened had Ananth Kumar led the campaign.
Ananth Kumar didn’t participate in the campaign because he had been diagnosed with cancer and he was away seeking treatment.
Also read: These Indian politicians have beaten or succumbed to cancer
Soon after his diagnosis, he got in touch with the BJP leadership and asked to be excused from contesting the 2019 election, telling them his wife Tejaswini won’t be stepping in either.
Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman was one of the first to tweet her condolences to Ananth Kumar’s family. “Deep sense of grief on hearing that Ananth Kumar is no more with us. Served BJP all along. Bengaluru was in his head and heart, always. May God give his family the strength to bear with this loss,” she said.
Prime Minister Modi tweeted his condolences too, saying, “Ananth Kumar Ji was an able administrator, who handled many ministerial portfolios and was a great asset to the BJP organization. He worked hard to strengthen the Party in Karnataka, particularly in Bengaluru and surrounding areas. He was always accessible to his constituents.”
In a following tweet, the PM also said that he had spoken to the family to express his condolences.
“I spoke to his wife, Dr. Tejaswini Ji and expressed condolences on the passing away of Shri Ananth Kumar Ji. My thoughts are with his entire family, friends and supporters in this hour of grief and sadness. Om Shanti, “ the tweet said.