Ananth Kumar, a six-time MP from Bengaluru, who forged consensus in getting GST bill passed in the Rajya Sabha, the man who revolutionised the fertilizers industry by enhancing the use of Neem Coated Urea, and the one who introduced Rs. 2.5 sanitary pads; passed away in the early hours of Monday.
Ananth Kumar had been undergoing cancer treatment for some time.
For the last few days, he had been on oxygen support at Sri Shankara Cancer Hospital and Research Center in Bengaluru. Earlier he had gone for check-ups to New York and London.
Flipping through the early pages of Kumar’s life one would find a political career typical of those day’s BJP leaders. One of the prisoners during the Emergency, Kumar was Influenced by the ideologies of the right-wing, Hindu nationalist organization, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). He became a member of its student union, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), where he first became the State Secretary and later its National Secretary.
Before being elected as the Lok Sabha MP for Bengaluru South for the first time in 1996, Kumar joined the BJP and was made the State President of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha.
Three years later, only in his second full-term as an MP, he was entrusted with the portfolio of Civil Aviation. Here, he had the pleasure to be the youngest cabinet minister under the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government.
Throughout his association with politics, the ever-smiling Ananth Kumar was known as the voice of Karnataka in the Lok Sabha. A state for whose BJP unit he became the President in 2003.
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Outside politics, Kumar was involved in social work. He was the leading Patron of the Adamya Chetana Foundation, an NGO that works for providing food and education facilities to the underprivileged.
The Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Chemical & Fertilizers was born to a middle-class family in the year 1959, in Bengaluru(then Bangalore), Karnataka. After pursuing BA from K S Arts College Hubli, he took the LLB course at the JSS Law College. The Minister is survived by his wife, Dr Tejeswini and their two daughters.
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