DNA Edit: Karnataka’s loss – Ananth Kumar built the BJP as a force to reckon with

The passing away of Union minister Ananth Kumar takes away from the BJP ranks a trusted leader, who made his mark in Karnataka, when the party was a rank outsider in the state. No wonder, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Kumar was regarded as the man who held the saffron party’s key to the South, a part of the country still not under the complete grip of the BJP. Kumar was the quintessential product of Sangh politics. He started his career as a member of the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) — like so many other central ministers today — and was imprisoned during the Emergency. 

Like the BJP, he never looked back since then. In the party, he rose steadily through the ranks, first as Karnataka president of the Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha and then BJP national secretary in 1996. Beginning that year, he beat successive Congress candidates to become MP six times. Kumar became the sole MP from Karnataka who became a Union minister three times, the first under Atal Behari Vajpayee and then finally with the Narendra Modi dispensation. Kumar stood out for his lack of caste support in a state where these allegiances matter. Unlike a lot of his former colleagues in the Vajpayee administration, he continued to be in the good books of the new Modi administration. That could also be attributed to his long innings in the party and his unmistakable clout, south of the Vindhyas, where the BJP needs it the most.  Kumar showed he could build a cadre where none existed and it was his credit that BJP continued to be a force to reckon with in Karnataka.