Anantkumar Hegde, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pick for his cabinet from poll-bound Karnataka, is among the party's longest serving MPs from the state. But not many, it appears, anticipated the move.
A five-time Lok Sabha member from the coastal Uttara Kannada district, Hegde hit headlines earlier this year when a video of him assaulting a doctor in a hospital in Sirsi was aired on TV. But the 49-year-old BJP leader has courted controversy before, particularly last year with a diatribe against Islam at a press conference in Bhatkal. "As long as there is Islam in this world there will be terrorism," he was quoted as saying by reports.
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Hegde, an RSS member, won his first Lok Sabha election in 1996 defeating Congress veteran Margaret Alva. He had, however, marked his presence two years earlier as part of a trio that hoisted the national flag in Hubli's disputed Idgah Maidan at the height of the controversy over the ownership of the grounds, one of Karnataka's long-running communally sensitive issues.
Hegde will be the fifth minister from Karnataka -- the others are H.N. Ananth Kumar, D.V. Sadananda Gowda, Ramesh Jigajinagi and Rajya Sabha member Nirmala Sitharaman -- where elections are due in April. By most accounts, the central leadership's move runs contrary to the general expectation among party circles in Karnataka that an MP from the politically significant Lingayat community would be chosen.
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Political commentator Sandeep Shastri reckons the move possibly reflects a few factors, among them BJP's focus on Karnataka's coastal districts, given that the party had not done well in Uttara Kannada in the previous elections. Hegde is seen as somebody who can deliver on the ground, says Shastri. Besides, he is among the longest serving parliamentarian from the state with a strong RSS backing. In Parliament, he has been a member of several Lok Sabha standing committees over the years. "I believe he has caught the eye of the leadership for that," says Shastri.
Hegde's Lok Sabha profile says he's an agriculturist and he also runs an NGO working on rural development. He also happens to be a Tae-Kwon-Do practitioner.
