The Supreme Court order striking down an amendment to the AIIMS Act used to ease out Dr P Venugopal as Director may be a blow for Anbumani Ramadoss, but the Union Health Minister is unlikely to be deterred. Since he began his eventful tenure, the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) leader — whose sole qualification was being the son of PMK founder S Ramadoss and being aligned to the powerful DMK — has climbed from obscurity to national recognition on the strength of his unfailing ability to court controversy:

BOLLYWOOD: Be it smoking, drinking or eating junk food, Ramadoss has trained his guns on the film industry. He has taken on biggies Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan and advised them against doing scenes showing them either smoking or drinking, saying it encourages youngsters to pick up the vices. He even and hinted that Saif Ali Khan’s rumoured “heart attack” was brought upon by his fondness for a brand of chips. He ensured that smoking was banned in movies and on the small screen. While Shah Rukh has been candid about what he thinks of Ramadoss’s opinions, even the otherwise reticent Bachchan has taken him on, writing in his blog: “Our intoxication, Minister, is in the credibility we bring to a drunken scene without being literally drunk, not to propagate alcoholism...” However, the Minister is not bothered, content with the WHO Director General’s Special Award for Tobacco Control. At the WHO award ceremony, in fact, he hinted he had found his next frontier in the war against tobacco: homes. “We are going to take stringent measures against smoking in public places... in fact any place where there are employees,” Ramadoss said. “Even at home, if you smoke and there is a maid present, action can be taken... If you have to smoke, then go to the roads.”

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