Biography Of Vishwanath pratap singh

Table of Contents

EARLY LIFE

Singh was born on 25 June, 1931 — the third child to be born in the royal household of Dahiya on the banks of the ancient Belan river in Allahabad. •
But fate had different plans for him. He was soon to be adopted by Raja Gopal Singh of Manda (from the Gaharvar clan), and at the tender age of 10 ascended the Manda throne in 1941. •
He obtained his education from Colonel Brown Cambridge School, Dehradun and studied at Allahabad and Pune universities. •
Singh became a Member of the Legislative Assembly of Uttar Pradesh in 1969 as a member of the Congress Party. He got elected to the Lok Sabha in 1971 and was appointed a Deputy Minister of Commerce by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1974. He served as the Minister of Commerce in 1976–77.

He was appointed by Indira Gandhi as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in 1980. •
As Chief Minister (1980–82), he cracked down hard on dacoity, a problem that was particularly severe in the rural districts of the south-west Uttar Pradesh. •
He resumed his post as Minister of Commerce in 1983.Singh was responsible for managing the coalition of the Left and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) against Rajiv Gandhi to dethrone him in the 1989 elections.

Called to New Delhi following Rajiv Gandhi’s mandate in the 1984 general election, Singh was appointed to the post of Finance. •
Following a number of high-profile raids on suspected evaders – including Dhirubhai Ambani and Amitabh Bachchan– Gandhi was forced to sack him as Finance Minister, possibly because many of the raids were conducted on industrialists who had supported the Congress financially in the past.
After a while, word began to spread that Singh possessed information about the Bofors defence deal (the infamous armsprocurement fraud) that could damage Gandhi’s reputation. •
Before he could act on it, he was dismissed from the Cabinet and, in response, resigned his memberships in the Congress Party (Indira) and the Lok Sabha.

Together with associates Arun Nehru and Arif Mohammad Khan, Singh floated an opposition party named Jan Morcha.
On 11 October 1988, the birthday of the original Janata coalition’s leader Jayaprakash Narayan, Singh founded the Janata Dal by the merger of Jan Morcha, Janata Party, Lok Dal and Congress (S)
. He soon assembled a larger nationwide opposition coalition called the National Front (NF), which contested the general parliamentary elections of November 1989 alongside BJP and the Communist parties.

In a meeting in the Central Hall of Parliament on December 1, Singh proposed the name of Devi Lal as Prime Minister. • Chaudhary Devi Lal, a Jat leader from Haryana stood up and refused the nomination, and said that he would prefer to be an ‘elder uncle’ to the Government, and that Singh should be Prime Minister. •
This last part came as a clear surprise to Chandra Shekhar, the former head of the erstwhile Janata Party, and Singh’s greatest rival within the Janata Dal.

Singh was sworn in as India’s Prime Minister on 2 December 1989. Singh held office for slightly less than a year, from 2 December 1989 to 10 November 1990.
Singh himself wished to move forward nationally on social justice-related issues, which would in addition consolidate the caste coalition that supported the Janata Dal in northern India.
Accordingly decided to implement the recommendations of the Mandal Commission which suggested that a fixed quota of all jobs in the public sector be reserved for members of the historically disadvantaged called Other Backward Classes.

The commission recommended the following steps:
(a) The reservation of 27 per cent jobs for those who do not qualify on the basis of merit.
(b) The reservation of 27 per cent for promotions at all levels.
(c) The reserved quota, if unfilled, should be carried forward fora period of three years and dereserved thereafter.
(d) Age relaxation for the backward classes should be the same as it is in the case of the scheduled castes and the scheduled tribes.
(e) A roster system should be prepared for the backward classes on the pattern of that for the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.
(f) The principle of reservation should be made applicable to all the public sector undertakings, banks, and private undertakings receiving grants from the central and state governments, universities and colleges.
(g) The government should make the necessary legal provisions for implementing these recommendations.

In 1990, the government-owned financial institutions like the Life Insurance Corporation of India and the General Insurance Corporation stonewalled attempts by the Reliance group to acquire managerial control over Larsen & Toubro
Sensing defeat, the Ambanis resigned from the board of the company. Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party was moving its own agenda forward. In particular, the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation.
The party president, LK Advani, with Pramod Mahajan as aide, toured the northern states on a rath .Before he could complete the tour by reaching the disputed site in Ayodhya, he was arrested on Singh’s orders at Samastipur

This led to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s suspension of support to the National Front government. VP Singh faced the vote of no confidence in the Lok Sabha saying that he occupied the high moral ground, as he stood for secularism
Singh resigned on 7 November 1990.
Chandra Shekhar immediately seized the moment and left the Janata Dal with several of his own supporters .Although Chandra Shekhar had a mere 64 MPs, Rajiv Gandhi the leader of the Opposition, agreed to support him on the floor of the House;