Senior politician and the first State president of the BJP A.K. Subbaiah, 85, who passed away in Bengaluru on Tuesday, was responsible for the party taking roots in the State in the 1980s. Later in life, this plain-speaking politician, was also one of the saffron party’s most bitter critics.

Mr. Subbaiah (called AKS) was an enigma for many. He was born on August, 9, 1936, in Belluru village of Virajpet taluk. He began his career as an advocate but then moved to politics. He was imprisoned during the Emergency, later drifted towards Bharatiya Jana Sangh and was elected the first State president of the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980. Known for his fiery speeches, he played a major role in the BJP’s expansion during its infancy in Karnataka along with others like V.S. Acharya and B.S. Yediyurappa. So much so, that by 1983, the BJP had emerged as a significant political force in Karnataka. AKS had rocked the Congress government of Gundu Rao exposing some of its scandals, and the BJP contested in the Assembly elections on its own and won 18 seats.

In view of a hung Assembly and at the instance of the party’s national leadership, BJP ended up extending outside support to the Janata Party which had won 95 seats and formed the government with Ramakrishna Hegde as Chief Minister.

Though influenced by the RSS and the Jana Sangh, he subsequently began speaking out against them and often landed in controversy. Mr. Subbaiah’s views used to be at variance with the BJP’s official stance on various issues, but he was known to speak his mind.

Falling out
As he fell out with the party’s leadership that began to ignore him, Mr. Subbaiah was marginalised within the BJP and began leaning towards the Congress. He served as Congress MLC from 1988 to 1994. Later, he launched his own party — Kannada Nadu — without success. Though he was not a force to reckon with politically in later years, he remained active in public life.

More recently, he had questioned the BJP for its stance against the Tipu Jayanti celebrations, even though it had drawn the wrath of a large number of Kodavas. In the run up to the Assembly elections in 2018, he called for a coalition of like-minded forces to keep communal forces at bay. He had written a book titled RSS Antharanga, critiquing the organisation. He was also part of a three-member committee, along with freedom fighter H.S. Doreswamy and the late editor-activist Gauri Lankesh, formed by former CM Siddaramaiah, to rehabilitate and bring to the mainstream left-wing extremists. The committee mediated the mainstreaming of nine of them.

Leaders across party lines condoled his death. CM Yediyurappa said that Mr. Subbaiah built the party from the grassroots and always fought against injustice.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Bengaluru / by R. Krishna Kumar / Mysuru – August 28th, 2019