Congress Rebel

In today’s blog I am writing about a Congress Rebel, who defied the party and later united the opposition and became PM for 11 months. He is

VP Singh

He belonged to royal family of Manda. He was first elected to Lok Sabha in 1971, and was Deputy Minister of Commerce in Indira Gandhi Ministry. When Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1980, he was asked by her to become CM of Uttar Pradesh. Indira Gandhi again called him back to Centre and he became Minister Of Commerce.

In Dec 1984, he became Finance Minister in Rajiv Gandhi’s Govt, where he was responsible for gradual relaxation of procedures of License Raj.During his term as Finance Minister, he oversaw the reduction of gold smuggling by reducing gold taxes and giving the police a portion of the confiscated gold. He also gave extraordinary powers to the Enforcement Directorate(ED) of the Finance Ministry, the wing of the ministry charged with tracking down tax evaders.

ED conducted raids on high profile businessmen including Dhirubhai Ambani, Amitabh Bachchan and many others. Rajiv Gandhi was forced  to sack him as Finance Minister, as the raid were also conducted on those Businessmen, who had contributed funds and supported Congress Party. He was shifted sideways  to Defence Ministry.

In the Defence Ministry also he started investigating  dubious Arm Deals, and he was responsible for unearthing Bofors Scandal, was then dismissed from the cabinet and he, in response resigned from Parliament & his Congress membership.

After coming out from the Congress, he formed Jan Morcha with his associates Arun Nehru & Arif Mohd. Khan. He was re elected to parliament from Allahabad. Some time later Janata Dal was formed with amalgamation of Jan Morcha, Lok Dal, Janata Party & Congress (S), and he also collaborated with other Regional parties like DMK,TDP, Asom Gana Parishad and this front came to be known as National Front. He became Convenor , NT Ramarao became President and P Upendra as General Secretary of National Front.

Before 1989 Elections, National Front made electrol understanding with BJP and left parties to unify the anti Congress votes.This gave the clear majority to the group and VP Singh formed the Govt  with outside support of BJP and Left parties.

Before VP Singh became PM, there was big hungama, as Chandra Shekhar (Janata Dal) was not agreeing for VP Singh as PM.

In a meeting in the Central Hall of Parliament on 1 December, VP Singh proposed the name of Devi Lal as Prime Minister, in spite of the fact that he himself had been clearly projected by the anti-Congress forces as the ‘clean’ alternative to Rajiv Gandhi and their Prime Ministerial candidate. Devi Lal, aJat leader from Haryana stood up and refused the nomination, and said that he would prefer to be a  Tau (elder uncle) to the Government, and that he proposes the name of  VP Singh to be the Prime Minister, and this proposal was immediately seconded by some supporter of VP Singh/Devi Lal group. This last part came as a clear surprise to Chandra Shekhar. He had clearly expected that an agreement had been forged with Lal as the consensus candidate, withdrew from the meeting and refused to serve in the Cabinet.

VP Singh’s Govt faced its first crisis, when terrorist kidnapped daughter  of Mufti Mohd. Sayeed(then Home Minister). Govt agreed for militants demands of releasing some terrorists for exchange. This move was widely criticized. After that  Governor of Jammu & Kashmir was changed.

In 1990, the government-owned financial institutions like the LIC of India and the GIC stonewalled attempts by the Reliance group to acquire managerial control over L & T, Sensing defeat, the Ambanis resigned from the board of the company. Dhirubhai, who had become Larsen & Toubro’s chairman in April 1989, had to quit his post to make way for D. N. Ghosh, former chairman of the State Bank of India.

VP Singh himself made a much-publicised visit to the Golden Temple to ask forgiveness for Operation Blue Star and the combination of events caused the long rebellion in Punjab to die down markedly in a few months.

As many low caste & OBC community had supported  National Front, He decided to to implement the recommendation of Mandal Commission Report, which suggested that a fixed quota of the jobs in Public Sector to be reserved for OBC. This  decision led to widespread  wild protests among upper class youth in urban areas in North India.

In the mean while BJP was going ahead with its agenda of Ram Mandir. To garner the support for their movement LK Advani started Rath yatra with his trusted aide Pramod Mahajan. Before the Rath could reach Ayodhya, LK Advani was stopped at Samastipur in Bihar, on VP Singh’s oreder by Lallu Prasad’s govt. On this issue BJP withdrew its support to VP singh’s Govt,  therefore VP Singh Govt resigned, after he lost the vote of confidence.

Afterwards Chandra Shekhar  with his group, and outside support of Congress formed the Govt., which lasted few months.

After early 90s he withdrew from politics for health reasons. He expired on 27^th Nov 2008 with multiple myeloma (cancer of plasma cells) and renal failure.

Waiting for your views/comments/feed backs.

Anil Malik

Mumbai, India

14^th mar 2019