V P Singh passes away

Former Prime Minister V P Singh, who dethroned late Rajiv Gandhi to form the first non-Congress coalition government at the Centre in 1989 and later did some social engineering through reservations that changed India’s political course irreversibly, died here today.

The 77-year-old leader, who has been battling blood cancer for over 17 years and renal failure, breathed his last in Apollo Hospital where he was admitted some six months ago.

The end came at 2.45 pm, a hospital spokesperson said. He is survived by wife Sita Singh and two sons, Ajeya and Abhay.

Singh was the finance minister and later defence minister during Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure and parted ways with the Congress over the Bofors pay-offs issue, whose ghost haunted the Congress for many years.

 

After the 1989 elections, the Janata Dal-led by V P Singh came to power with outside support from the BJP on one side and that of the Left parties on the other, but his National Front government did not last more than 11 months. It fell after the BJP withdrew support following the arrest of L K Advani during his Somnath to Ayodhya Rath Yatra in 1991. The BJP leader was arrested by the JD government in Bihar, then led by Lalu Prasad.

Singh’s tenure as PM would be best known for the social engineering as his government accepted the Mandal Commission report on job reservations for Other Backward Classes, which virtually 'mandalised' the politics in many of the states.

Singh, once considered very close to Rajiv Gandhi, quit his government in 1987 on the issue of corruption in public life.

After being expelled from the Congress, he launched ‘Jan Morcha’, was elected to the Lok Sabha from Allahabad and then became a rallying point for the National Front comprising Janata Dal, Telugu Desam, Asom Gana Parishad, DMK and Congress(S). The Jan Morcha was merged with the Janata Dal before the 1989 General Election.

In May 1996, after the defeat of the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections, Singh was the guiding spirit behind the formation of the United Front and was the first choice for Prime Ministership. But he declined the offer.

After the government of H D Deve Gowda fell in April 1997, he again played an important role from his hospital bed along with the late Left veteran Harkishan Singh Surjeet in maintaining the UF unity and making Inder Kumar Gujral the PM.

Away from politics, Singh had always taken a keen interest in poetry and painting and had also held exhibitions of his artwork.

He has penned a number of poems and his first anthology of poems 'Ek Tukda Dharti, Ek Tukda Asman' was published some time back.

Perhaps the greatest rallying point for 'anti- Congressism' in the country after Jaiprakash Narayan, Singh, however, took positions nearer to that of the Congress in late years, particularly after BJP came to power at the Centre in 1998.

Born in Allahabad on June 25, 1931, Singh studied science with aspirations of becoming a nuclear scientist and came out with flying colours in the B Sc examinations in Ferguson College, Pune.

But he finally gave pursuing M Sc From Allahabad University and was lured into politics. He made his debut as a Congress legislator in 1969, winning the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, and remained a member of the House till 1971, before being elected for the first time to the Lok Sabha.

Singh was inducted into Indira Gandhi’s Council of Ministers as a Deputy Minister of Commerce. After that, there was no looking back for him.

In 1980, when Indira Gandhi returned to power, Singh was made the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. His two-year stint at the helm of India's largest state ended dramatically when he quit in the wake of the anti-dacoit operations launched by his government.

But soon he was made the commerce minister in Gandhi's Cabinet. As the finance minister in Rajiv Gandhi's government, Singh gained popularity for ordering searches and raids against industrial houses, hiring an American detective agency Fairfax for investigating accounts of non-resident Indians and for taking up the Bofors pay-offs case.