IndiaPost.com - Former PM Chandra Shekhar dead

NEW DELHI: Former prime minister Chandra Shekhar, known as a committed Socialist and a rebel throughout his life, died here on Sunday morning after a prolonged battle with cancer of the blood. He had turned 80 just a week ago. The firebrand leader, once known as a “Young Turk” in the Congress, who had friends cutting across party lines, is survived by two sons. He breathed his last at 8.45 am at Apollo Hospital here, where he had been admitted three months ago.

“He was suffering from multiple myloma (blood disease), Dr Rakesh Chopra, senior consultant (oncology), who was attending on him, said. Chandra Shekhar’s personal secretary R.B. Yadav said the cremation will take place at 4 pm on Monday near the samadhis of former Presidents Zail Singh, Shankar Dayal Sharma and K.R. Narayanan. The body was kept at his official residence here to enable people to pay their last respects. The Centre has declared a seven-day period of national mourning as a mark of respect. Cabinet, presided over by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, was held here on Sunday to condole the death of Chandra Shekhar.

The national flag will fly at half-mast throughout the country during the mourning period, parliamentary affairs minister Priya Ranjan Das Munshi told reporters after the Cabinet meeting. Union government offices and establishments in and around New Delhi will remain closed from 1 pm on Monday, he added. The Bihar government, meanwhile, announced a three-day period of mourning from Sunday. Chief minister Nitish Kumar said in Patna that the State Cabinet meeting and the janata durbar too had been cancelled. The UP government also declared a two-day period of mourning. Chandra Shekhar was an eight-time MP from Balia in the State.

President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, vice-president Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, the governors and chief ministers of different States, Union ministers and leaders of political parties have condoled his death. Chandra Shekhar was the first leader to become Prime Minister without having earlier held any ministerial or other office under the Union or any State, despite his long political and legislative experience. At the time of his death, he was the sitting MP from Balia.

He had entered Parliament by becoming a Rajya Sabha member in 1962. In 1967, he became general secretary of the Congress Party in Parliament, and was an elected member of the Congress Working Committee. He was a member of every Lok Sabha, except one, since he was first elected to the Lower House in the watershed elections of 1977 following the end of the Emergency. He only could not get elected to the eighth Lok Sabha: he lost in the 1984 parliamentary elections held just after the assassination of Indira.

He became Prime Minister on November 10, 1990, following the fall of the V.P. Singh government, but could serve in that office only for a few months. The socialist veteran had held no office before he split with Mr V.P. Singh and floated a rebel outfit, Janata Dal (Socialist), at the height of the anti-reservation agitation in 1990, and went on to form a weak minority government with the outside support of Congress, then led by late Rajiv Gandhi. His government was shortlived, and fell after the Congress decided to withdraw support in the wake of the controversy over two intelligence operatives being spotted outside 10, Janpath in Delhi (the residence of Rajiv Gandhi), which the Congress felt was an attempt to snoop on Mr Gandhi.

Chandra Shekhar resigned on the floor of the House when the motion of thanks on the President’s address came under the threat of defeat from the Congress. During his days in the Congress in the 1960s and early ’70s, Chandra Shekhar was known as the leader of a group known as the “Young Turks”, and was outspoken in his views and in his opposition to big monopolies and industrialists’ groups to whom he did not want any government concessions granted. He fell out with Indira in the period leading up to the Emergency, during which time he was put behind bars along with Opposition leaders.

When the Emergency ended, the politics of the country had become transformed and Chandra Shekhar became president of the Janata Party, which came to power at the Centre and in several states in 1977. Earlier, in the Congress, when Indira Gandhi was locked in battle with the party old guard known as the “Syndicate”, he was one of the Prime Minister’s key supporters on issues such as bank nationalisation.

Chandra Shekhar remained president of the Janata Party till he merged it with the newly-formed Janata Dal in 1989. After the break with V.P. Singh, he formed the Samajwadi Janata Party, which for a brief while reunited with the Janata Dal, but later went back to its original shape and was headed by him till the end.