Bengaluru: Veteran Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Ramachandra Gowda (87) passed away at a private hospital in Bengaluru today due to age-related illness.
A former Minister and 5-time member of the Karnataka Legislative Council from 1988 to 2018, Ramachandra Gowda was from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) stables. He started his career in the Jan Sangh, the predecessor to the BJP.
Shortly after V.S. Acharya won from Udupi Municipality in 1968, recording Jan Sangh’s first-ever victory in South India, Gowda won as a Councillor in Bangalore City Corporation in 1970. He was from the first generation of leaders from the party to lay the groundwork for what became the BJP later. He was senior to former Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa in the party and was his close associate for decades in building the party ground up.
“I have lost another brother. I remember the days when we worked hard to build the party in Karnataka. He was a leader even during the Jan Sangh days. I was witness to his commitment and administrative acumen as a Minister in my Cabinet,” said Yediyurappa.
Born in 1938 in Kunigal, Tumakuru district, Gowda was an RSS worker. As a high school student, he participated in the Goa Liberation Movement and later joined Jan Sangh. He carried out underground activities opposing the Emergency (1975-77), and managed to evade arrest.
He was a Councillor of Bangalore City Corporation twice, was elected as a member of the City Improvement Trust Board (CITB), and later its successor Bangalore Development Authority (BDA). He contested from the Bangalore Graduates Constituency for the Karnataka Legislative Council in 1988 and won the seat. He won five times consecutively and was a member till 2018.
When BJP first shared power with Janata Dal (Secular) in 2006, he held charge of Sericulture, Planning and Statistics, Small Savings and Lottery and Science and Technology Departments. In 2008, when BJP came to power on its own, he was given charge of Medical Education. In 2010, he was dropped from the Ministry and made Deputy Chairman of the Karnataka State Planning Board.
He retired from active politics after 2018.
