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HomeIndiaBJP veteran Shanta Kumar’s six decade-long political journey comes to an unpleasant...

BJP veteran Shanta Kumar’s six decade-long political journey comes to an unpleasant end

The BJP didn’t give Shanta Kumar, the 84-year-old former CM of Himachal Pradesh, a chance to defend the Kangra seat, signalling the end of the road for him.

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Shimla: Shanta Kumar’s six decade-long political innings has come to an end on an unpleasant note, after he was expectedly kept out of the BJP’s list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections in Himachal Pradesh.

Kumar, who began his career as a ward panch, became the first non-Congress chief minister of Himachal in 1977 and was elected to four Lok Sabhas. However, given the BJP’s recent aversion to giving tickets to senior leaders such as L.K. Advani, it was only a matter of time before the 84-year-old leader was also sent into political retirement.

The blow came when Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur drove to Kumar’s Delhi residence, asking him to make a statement opting out of the contest. The veteran leader obliged, minutes before the BJP Parliamentary Board sat to decide on the candidates for Himachal Pradesh. A day before, the party’s national organising secretary Ram Lal had also put in him same request.

Insiders say that earlier this month, at the BJP’s state-level core committee meeting in Baddi, it was proposed that all four sitting MPs be retained. At this stage, neither BJP’s state in-charge Mangal Pandey nor poll observer T.S. Rawat gave any hint to Kumar that he would not be retained as the candidate from Kangra. It was only ahead of the parliamentary board meeting that he was asked to make the statement about not contesting, paving the way for state minister Krishan Kapoor to be given the ticket.

“Everything looked scripted,” said one of Kumar’s loyalists, recalling that the senior leader had more than once conveyed to the party that he would like to take electoral retirement.

Kumar had won Kangra by a record margin of 1.70 lakh votes in 2014.


Also read: Ex-CM Shanta Kumar dropped from BJP’s Himachal list


An uncompromising leader

Kumar was instrumental in the RSS’ penetration into Himachal Pradesh, beginning in the mid-1960s.

He was barely 19 when he left home to become a pracharak, sacrificing his 17-day old job as school teacher at Baijnath in Kangra. He was jailed for his role in the Kashmir agitation against Article 370 under Syama Prasad Mookerjee, and later during the Emergency.

Kumar is well-known for his uncompromising stand on his values, such as his statement after the 2002 Gujarat riots that if he had been CM he would’ve resigned.

“In my entire life or politics, I never begged for a position. You would be surprised to know, I never ever applied for a ticket in any elections — whether it was to be a panch in 1963, to the zila parishad, state assembly or Parliament. I never compromised with my principles, yet abided by the party,” he told ThePrint.

Having become CM for the first time in 1977, he lost power after a Congress-engineered defection in 1980. His second term began in March 1990, but also ended abruptly after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992.

Major policies

As CM, Kumar implemented the ‘no work, no pay’ principle in Himachal Pradesh, under which agitating government employees would lose pay for going on strike. This ended the era of employees paralysing the government and dictating terms to chief ministers.

He also took the hard decision to cut apple subsidy in 1990-91 to clip the wings of the powerful apple lobby, which blocked his future chances of becoming CM for a third time.

Kumar also helmed two revolutionary policies that brought prosperity to Himachal Pradesh. One was to make the Centre agree to a demand for royalty in hydroelectric projects (12 per cent free power) and bringing the private sector into hydro-power generation, which went a long way in making the hill state self-reliant. The other was installing handpumps in many water-scarce areas, which earned him the moniker ‘pani waala mukhya mantri’.


Also read: LK Advani ‘sensed wind of change in BJP’, called up Amit Shah to bow out of Lok Sabha race


Speaking his mind

Kumar’s statement after the Gujarat riots was hardly the only time he grabbed headlines for speaking his mind. Whether it was the Bangaru Laxman bribery scandal or allegations of corruption against the BJP government in Himachal Pradesh in 2002-03, or even the multi-crore VYAPAM scam in Madhya Pradesh a few years ago, he never hesitated to raise his voice.

Sent to Karnataka as the party’s state in-charge, he took a stand against then-chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa on alleged corruption and nepotism.

Mohinder Sofat, a minister in Kumar’s cabinet, recalled: “He never cared about consequences of politically-correct action. When he chose to implement ‘no work, no pay’, he knew its political fall-out. He also invoked same principle on himself and his colleagues, when he questioned why MPs should draw allowance for the days Parliament did not function.”

After Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014, Shanta Kumar was assigned the task of carrying out major reforms in the farm sector by restructuring the Food Corporation of India. He submitted his report to the PM in 2015, and his committee proposed cash incentives to deal with farmer distress. The Modi government’s assured income support scheme for farmers is derived from those recommendations.

Kumar never allowed any of his family members to enter politics, and now plans to work for the Vivekanand Trust, which he had set up at Palampur.

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3 COMMENTS

  1. BJP is going to lose these elections. And the same people who are being thrown out by Narendra Modi in a most inhuman manner are going to get together post-elections and RESURRECT the old BJP which had Advani etc in a respectable role. And these two Gujarati gentlemen are going back home. Or Mr Modi might go abroad on a speech delivery tour, or might settle down in Suchi or whatever that place in Russia is called.

  2. Shows how decisions are made in BJP now. The state committee wanted him to contest despite his repeated public statements for opting out of electoral politics. His name was unanimously recommended in view of his mass appeal. Why then did the central leadership have to handle this so disgracefully?

  3. Well i think this is a great move to bring younger people in politics. I mean after 84 years don’t you people think he should resign himself??

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