Anantkumar Hegde won again from Uttara Kannada Lok Sabha seat in Karnataka
Anantkumar Hegde, BJP parliamentarian from Karnataka who won the national election from Uttara Kannada seat by over 7.8 lakh votes, did not get a call to join the new government in the centre led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He was also not a part of his grand oath ceremony in Delhi today.
Anantkumar Hegde joined the BJP in the early 90s and contested the Lok Sabha election from Uttara Kannada constituency in 1996. He travelled in and around the constituency and mobilised a popular support base, ensuring BJP's first victory from the constituency that was earlier a strong Congress bastion.
Anantkumar Hegde was re-elected to the Lok Sabha from the same constituency in 1998 to serve as a parliamentarian for a second term. And again in 2004 national election he won for a third time from Uttara Kannada. He repeated the victory in 2009 and 2014 as well as in the recent national election.
In January this year, Mr Hegde plumbed new lows in public discourse with a series of inflammatory and wild statements when he declared at a public event that any hand that touches a Hindu girl "should not exist". In the same month, he termed the Kerala government's handling of the Sabarimala row as "daylight rape" of Hindus.
Mr Hegde, a senior Karnataka leader of the BJP, has been a non-stop source of provocative remarks that didn't pause even after he joined the central government in 2017.
Last year, the serial offender described Dalit protesters who waylaid his convoy en route to a job fair in Karnataka's Ballari as "dogs barking on the road". A few months later, he compared the opposition to "crows, monkeys, foxes and others" that had come together to fight the tiger that's Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Even the Janata Dal (United), a BJP ally, asked him to mind his language.
In 2017, Mr Hegde said that his party, the BJP, would change the Constitution by removing the word "secular" from it - provoking protests across the country. The same year, he was caught slapping a doctor on camera because he wasn't happy with the medical treatment provided to his mother.