Congress' crafty strategist Arjun Singh is no more

Updated on: 05 March,2011 07:41 AM IST |
Agencies |

The Rajiv loyalist's Prime Ministerial aspirations were thwarted by Sonia

The Rajiv loyalist's Prime Ministerial aspirations were thwarted by Sonia

Veteran Congress leader Arjun Singh died yesterday

Of the many hats he wore during his five-decade-long political career, he really came into his own when he was the virtual number two in the Cabinet of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao 1991-96.

As the human resource development minister in the Rao Cabinet, Singh was not only responsible for launching the National Literacy Mission but also launched a not-so-covert political mission to unseat Rao when the latter was under siege because of the swirling corruption scandals.

At that time, Singh stayed in 3, Race Course Road, that was still not part of the Prime Minister's official residence, and it became a hotbed of dissident activity before it ran out of steam and support and ended his prime ministerial aspirations.

But Singh, along with senior colleague Narayan Dutt Tiwari launched a rebel party Congress (T) which played spoilsport in the 1996 elections and denied Rao a second innings.

He rejoined the Congress in 1997 after Rao was sidelined in the party. He played a role in prevailing upon Sonia Gandhi to lead the party when it was in a bad shape.

Even though Singh came back to become a minister in the cabinet of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2004, he never reconciled to a party junior as his boss and kept taking decisions that were not in tune with the reformist thinking of the prime minister.

He was dropped, much to his displeasure, from the second United Progressive Alliance (UPA) cabinet in 2009, and there was speculation that he would be made governor.u00a0

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