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In surprise move, BJP picks Nalin Kateel as Karnataka unit president
Nalin Kumar Kateel is a three-time member of Parliament from the coastal Dakshina Kannada and is known as a fire-brand Hindutva leader with a penchant for making controversial statements. He is announced as the Karnataka unit president of BJP.
The central leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party pulled off a surprise on Tuesday by announcing Nalin Kumar Kateel as the new president of its Karnataka unit after the post was vacated by chief minister BS Yediyurappa.
Kateel is a three-time member of Parliament from the coastal Dakshina Kannada and is known as a fire-brand Hindutva leader with a penchant for making controversial statements. During the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year, Kateel had said Nathuram Godse had killed only one person, Mahatma Gandhi, whereas former prime minister Rajeev Gandhi had killed 17,000. He was censured by BJP president Amit Shah for the comments.
At 53, Kateel is part of the second rung leadership the party is trying to build as Yediyurappa ages.
The move came as a surprise even to party insiders as they had so far touted the post to be given to either Chickamagaluru MLA CT Ravi or Mahadevapura MLA Arvind Limbavali. Ravi dropped out of the race on Tuesday after he was included in the state Cabinet, which was expanded on the day, despite the fact that he had made it clear to the party that he would prefer the state president role to a Cabinet berth.
Limbavali, it appears, missed out on the post after a video was leaked purportedly showing him in a compromising position. Though Limbavali has claimed that the video was morphed, leaders in the party said this had worked against him.
“Of course, Kateel is a surprise to us. However, we have learnt now not to be surprised by anything in the party because this isn’t the old BJP, it is [national president] Amit Shah’s BJP and these are par for the course,” the BJP leader said.
Political analyst Narendar Pani, who is a faculty at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, said the move signalled that the BJP was making a departure from the Yediyurappa era and it was trying to make the party completely ideological.
“Kateel is in the same mould as Ananth Kumar Hegde and both are very committed to Hindutva,” he said.
“It is clear that Shah wants to move the party towards this ideology more clearly. This is a break from the state BJP’s character so far, but it looks like this is a general shift the party is attempting across the country. Let us see if this brings the BJP the rewards it is expecting,” he said.
