New Delhi: When Lal Bahadur Shastri’s grandson Vibhakar Shastri ended his 25-year association with the Congress to join the BJP earlier this month, he was not the first member from the family of India’s second prime minister to part ways with the party.
Nine out of 22 members from the two generations of the Shastri family have carved out their political careers across half a dozen political parties.
“Only they can tell. It was their personal decision,” Anil Shastri, former PM’s son and a Congress leader, told ThePrint when asked why the Shastri family members, including Vibhakar, deserted the party.
Another scion Sameep Shastri, who is with the BJP, was candid about the reasons for this recurring theme.
“Unfortunately, we all feel that our ties were with the Congress, but somehow when you see you are putting in so much effort… It’s a career growth path…there is no opportunity there. Woh actually ek parivar ki party hogayi hai aur BJP khud ek parivar hai. (That is a party of a family, and the BJP is a family) You have to make your own space in it, and you will get time,” he told ThePrint.
Sameep, however, said that the Shastri family is “very, very closely knit and that we all respect our opinions”.
ThePrint takes a look at the political preferences, affiliations and careers of the late Lal Bahadur Shastri’s descendants.
Sons & daughters
Lal Bahadur Shastri had four sons and two daughters. Amongst them, three ventured into politics.
Hari Krishna Shastri, the eldest of the four sons of Lal Bahadur and Lalita Devi, followed his father’s footsteps to join the Congress party. He is probably the only member from the family, apart from his illustrious father, to remain with the Congress throughout.
He became a Lok Sabha MP even before Indira Gandhi did, in 1967 from Allahabad, a seat which was previously held by his father when he became the prime minister. Hari Krishna was twice elected from Fatehpur in 1980 and 1984. However, in a high-profile battle, he lost to former prime minister V.P. Singh in 1989 by over 1 lakh votes.
A member of the Public Accounts Committee for two years during the seventh Lok Sabha (1980-84), he also served as minister of state for agriculture for a short period of time under PM Rajiv Gandhi in 1988-89. He passed away in 1997.
Sunil Shastri, the second son, joined the Congress as an active member in 1977. He fought and won the Uttar Pradesh elections from Gorakhpur in 1980 and 1985.
Sunil Shastri has shuttled between the Congress and the BJP several times, beginning in 1998. He became a national general secretary of the BJP and served as its spokesperson for three years. He then became a member of the Rajya Sabha in 2002 for a brief period of six months.
In 2004, he went on to form his own party, Jai Jawan Jai Kisan Mazdoor Congress, after resigning from the BJP. He returned to the Congress in 2009, only to go back to the BJP months before the 2014 general election.
Sunil Shastri has held several important portfolios over the years in the government of Uttar Pradesh, including power, heavy industries, labour, training & employment, and technical education. He has served under chief ministers like N.D. Tiwari, V.P. Singh, Veer Bahadur Singh, and Sripati Mishra
In December 2021, ahead of Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, he met Priyanka Gandhi and re-joined the Congress. At that time, Priyanka, who was Congress general secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh, described Sunil Shastri as a “soldier of the Congress” and said they “will fight together for the nation and win”.
On being asked why family members of the former prime minister did not stick to Congress, Sunil Shastri told ThePrint: “There were only such circumstances. There (in political parties) they see how things are. And when things don’t work out, people don’t come to politics to sit at home. At the end of the day, they come to serve the people.”
“There are circumstances that compelled them to take certain decisions,” he added.
Anil Shastri, the third among the four brothers, first shot into prominence when he won with a large mandate from the Varanasi parliamentary seat in 1989 on a Janata Dal ticket, registering 62.31 percent of the total vote, and went on to become the Minister of State for finance under the V.P. Singh-led National Front government.
The outspoken leader is currently serving as chairman of Hindi department of the All India Congress Committee (AICC).
He was among the Congress leaders who were against the BJP’s ‘politicisation’ of the inauguration of Ram Mandir. Much before the Congress leadership made its decision to skip the event, he tweeted in December: “It’s for all to see that inauguration of Ram Mandir at Ayodhya on 22nd Jan is a BJP event. Congress leaders invited to the event should not attend it. They should rather visit the temple along with many more Congress leaders at a later date preferably on Ram Navmi”
Ashok Shastri, the youngest youngest son of Lal Bahadhur Shastri, was the only among the four brothers to not venture into politics. He died in 1987, ten years after his marriage to Neera Shastri. Neera joined the BJP in early 1990s. She went on to become the president of Delhi BJP Mahila Morcha. Neera is still an active member of the BJP.
Kusum Kumar, the eldest of the siblings, chose to become a housewife after marrying IAS officer Kaushal Kumar. Hers is the only family that has stayed out of politics over two generations.
Suman Singh, who was the second in the line, was married to K.N. Singh. Her son Sidharth Nath Singh is a senior BJP leader who was a minister in the Yogi Adityanath-led government during its first term in Uttar Pradesh.
Grandchildren
Vibhakar Shastri, the son of Hari Krishna, contested the Lok Sabha election from Fatehpur on a Congress ticket in 2009 and lost. Last week, unlike his father who was the only one from the family to stay in the Congress throughout, Vibhakar jumped ships and joined BJP
Vibhakar’s brother Diwakar continues to stay away from politics. According to family members, Diwakar runs a business related to murano glass. He and Vibhakar were in news in 2019 when they sent a legal notice to filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri alleging that ‘The Tashkent Files’ is an “attempt to create unwarranted and unnecessary controversy”.
Anil Shastri’s son Adarsh Shastri worked with Apple Inc. long before he joined the Aam Aadmi Party in 2013. He was elected as MLA from Delhi’s Dwarka in 2015.
Adarsh was on the list of 20 AAP MLAs to be disqualified by the Election Commission for holding “office of profit” in 2018, which was later set aside by the Delhi High Court.
After being denied a ticket by the AAP in 2020, he joined the Congress party the same year and is a spokesperson for the party’s Delhi unit.
Lagan Shastri, the second son, is in the corporate world. Currently serving as the Managing Director & CEO, DFM Foods Ltd, he has previously worked as Executive Director (Marketing Operations) with Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages. Lagan is a graduate from IIM Bangalore.
Mudit Shastri, the brother of Lagan and Adarsh, is currently the Vertical Head Government Business at LG Electronics.
Vinamra Shastri, the son of Sunil Shastri, joined Jayant Chaudhary’s Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) in 2021. Vinamra had been heading the Lal Bahadur Shastri Memorial Foundation and also led various corporate companies in different capacities, the RLD had said then.
Vaibhav Shastri was the former head of mobile business at Micromax and CEO of Zen Mobiles. He now heads his own consultancy firm.
Vibhor Shastri, the third among the siblings, is currently with Devyani International Limited. He was previously the marketing director at Burjeel Holdings in the UAE.
Ashok Shastri’s son Sameep Shastri joined the BJP in 2010, the only second generation BJP politician after his mother Neera Shastri. Sameep did his post graduation from Oxford and is currently the chairman of Indian Institute of Governance and Leadership, president of Confederation of Young Leaders, and vice-chairman of BRICS Chamber of Commerce & Industry.
Mahima Shastri runs a digital marketing firm and is also a member of BJP. She is followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on social media.
On the other hand, Ashok Shastri’s other daughter Mandira Shastri stays away from politics and runs her cloud kitchen and a restaurant in Gurugram.
Siddharth Nath Singh, the son of Lal Bahadur Shastri’s daughter Suman Singh, has served as spokesperson for the BJP. He is an MLA in the UP assembly since 2017 from Allahabad West.
Sidharth’s elder brother Sanjay Nath Singh is now the working president and secretary general of the All India Farmers Association. He had earlier worked with Tata Steels.
Vineeta Khanna, the only daughter of Suman Singh, runs her boutique store for clothing and shoes.
Kusum Kumar’s daughter Neerja Sinha was married to former chief vigilance commissioner Pratyush Sinha. She passed away at the age of 68 in 2019.
Neerja’s brother Balesh Kumar, a retired IRS officer, served as a member of the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs. He was also a member of the Appellate Tribunal under the Smugglers and Foreign Exchange Manipulators Act.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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