Ramakrishna Hegde - Chief Minister

Chief Minister

When the Janata Party came to power by emerging as the single largest party in the 1983 State elections, he emerged as a consensus candidate between the powerful Lingayat and Vokkaliga lobbies. Thus, He became the first non-Congress chief minister of Karnataka. A master strategist, he cobbled up a two-thirds majority for his government by an arrangement of outside support from other parties. His government secured the outside support of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), left parties and 16 Independents.

Following the poor performance of the Janata Party in the 1984 Lok Sabha elections (it won only 4 out of the 28 seats from Karnataka), Hegde resigned on the grounds that his party had lost its popular mandate and sought a fresh mandate for his government. In the 1985 elections, the Janata Party came to power on its own with a comfortable majority.

As Chief Minister between 1983 and 1985 and again between 1985 and 1988, he became an active votary of State rights within a federal set-up, but one who made no concession to regional or linguistic chauvinism. Secondly, he took innovative initiatives in expanding the federal principle within the State, primarily in the area of devolving power to local bodies and in trying to enforce accountability. During his Chief Ministership, Karnataka pioneered legislation on Panchayat raj that devolved a substantial degree of financial and administrative powers to a three-tiered structure of local government. In 1984 he introduced legislation to deal with official and administrative corruption through the institution of the Lokayukta. Also, he started the 'Kannada watchdog panel' to oversee the implementation of Kannada in administration. He has the rare distinction of presenting thirteen finance budgets in the State assembly.

As Chief minister, Hegde enjoyed immense personal popularity and was acknowledged as an efficient administrator. However, as days passed by, his rule was mirred with several scams involving alleged corruption on the part of his own family. His son was accused of taking money for a medical seat. There were allegations made by the Congress (I) against him in a case involving the transfer of shares by the NGEF company. He resigned twice from chief ministership, the first time for only three days on February 13, 1986 when the Karnataka High Court censured his government for the way it handled arrack bottling contracts and again in August 1988 when he accepted moral responsibility for the tapping of the telephones of prominent politicians in the State.

He was also the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission of India, during the tenure of V. P. Singh. He was expelled from Janata Dal by its president Lalu Prasad Yadav, as per the instructions of the then Prime minister H. D. Deve Gowda in 1996. Following his expulsion, Hegde formed the Rashtreeya Nava nirmana vedike a social organisation and then his own political party 'Lok Shakti'. He allied with the Bharatiya Janata Party and the alliance won a majority of the Lok Sabha seats from Karnataka in the 1998 General Elections. He became the Commerce minister in the BJP led NDA government in 1998. After the Janata Dal split of 1999, the faction led by his protégé and the then Chief Minister J.H.Patel and the Lok Shakti merged to form the Janata Dal (United) and allied with the BJP. However, the alliance suffered a set back in the 1999 General Elections owing to the anti incumbency against the Patel Government and the Congress party emerged victorious in Karnataka.