Bengaluru, Aug 5 (IANS): An ace Kabaddi player during his college days, Shankar Patil Munenkoppa was on Wednesday sworn in as a minister in Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai's cabinet.

The 52-year-old Lingayat leader is one of the six fresh faces who have been inducted into the ministry, and had succeeded in outmanoeuvring BJP leaders like Aravind Bellad and others in Hubballi-Dharwad district for the berth.

As a student leader, Munenkoppa was initially associated with the Janata Party and due to his organisational skills, he became its state Organisation Secretary in 1989.

But after the demise of its stalwart and Chief Minister, Ramakrishna Hegde, Munenkoppa, like many other Janata Party bigwigs including Bommai, joined the BJP and has never looked back since then.

He won from Nagvalgund Assembly constituency on a BJP ticket in 2008 and due to his proximity to BJP veteran leader, Jagadish Shettar, became his political secretary when Shettar was the Chief Minister in 2012-13. He lost in the 2013 Assembly polls but wrested back his seat from the Janata Dal-S in 2018.