Newsmaker: Ananth Kumar

Minister hits the ground running

Sushma Swaraj has arguably been the most popular minister to hold the portfolio of parliamentary affairs. CPI (M) leader and Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee had said she was the best because of her way with people. Priyaranjan Dasmunshi was also judged a successful one for his capacity to press flesh, oblige, honour and respect -and also humiliate colleagues who acquire a completely different personality when on the floor of the House. Kamal Nath mastered parliamentary rules and tactics down to a fine art.

After Venkaiah Naidu, who was popular but could not always master parliamentary technique, and was a victim of the Congress's shout-down tactics, Ananth Kumar has hit the ground running. He has already established contact with leaders of the Congress in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, to lay ground rules and draw red lines. In a sense, Ananth Kumar has got his due only now. He is one of the most senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders in the government but as minister for chemicals and fertiliser, has been heavily underutilised. He has held the Bengaluru South constituency in Karnataka for six terms since 1996; in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, defeated Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, by 230,000 votes. Ananth Kumar came to the BJP through the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad route. He was civil aviation minister in the Vajpayee government within a year of that government coming to power. He oversaw the framing of policy for the country's first real public-private partnership in the civil aviation space, the Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru. The detailing of this project was considered so thorough that it became a model for more such across the country, notably in Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad. Vajpayee also entrusted him with tourism, sports and youth affairs, culture, urban development and poverty alleviation during the six years his government was in office (1998-2004).

Thus, when this government came to power he should have been number six in the government but was around number 11. Like many others, he had no special relationship with Narendra Modi and was seen as an L K Advani supporter. That and a degree of rivalry with Arun Jaitley worked against him.

Ananth Kumar has been a big votary of Bengaluru. Some of his notable contributions include the metro rail project, inclusion of the city in the Golden Quadrilateral highway network, setting up a modern art gallery in the city and building a cargo-handling facility for perishables that put Bengaluru on the global map for export of flowers, fruit and vegetables. In 2004, he was named the BJP's national general secretary and given charge of Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. He was also named chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on external affairs in 2010 and held that post till dissolution of the 15th Lok Sabha. This was a post that also took him to the UN General Assembly, where he spoke in Kannada. He has kept a relatively low profile in this government - something about to change.