George Fernandes entered active politics in 1967 by defeating seasoned Congress leader S.K. Patila in the Bombay South constituency election.
New Delhi: Former Defence minister and socialist leader George Fernandes passed away Tuesday after prolonged illness. Fernandes was 88.
Fernandes was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, which had forced him out of the public eye for several years, and had recently contracted swine flu, his long time associate, Jaya Jaitly told news agency PTI. Fernandes died at his residence in New Delhi.
Born in Mangalore in a Christian family in 1930, he was a staunch anti-Congress leader. His tie-up with the BJP in mid-1990s was crucial in ending the saffron party’s isolation in alliance politics as many ‘secular’ parties followed his cue and propelled it to power twice under Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s leadership.
His underground crusade against the Emergency catapulted him among the leading opposition figures. A photograph of Fernandes, with his shock of unkempt hair, raising a manacled hand in defiance remains one of the most enduring images of those times.
Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan, Fernandes’ colleague for years in several socialist parties, said his unimpeachable commitment to democracy and willingness to go to any length to propagate his cause was an inspiration to him and many others during the Emergency.
Fernandes entered the electoral politics with a bang after he, as the Samyukta Socialist Party candidate, defeated seasoned Congress leader S.K. Patila in Bombay South constituency in 1967.
An active trade unionist, he was involved in the railway strike in 1974, which disrupted train services across the country and invited a massive government crackdown.
He later shifted his political base to Muzaffarpur in Bihar and won the election from there in 1977.
He was appointed the industries minister in the Janata Party government, and his tenure was marked with multinational firms Coca Cola and IBM shutting down their Indian operations as he pushed hard government regulations.
Long a trenchant critic of the BJP and its ideological parent Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, he warmed up to its top leaders L K Advani and Vajpayee as the national politics saw the rise of regional chieftains, including Lalu Prasad in Bihar.
It is believed that he played a key role in bringing Nitish Kumar, who like Fernandes had begun drifting away from Prasad, then Bihar chief minister, to the BJP-led alliance after the 1995 assembly polls in the state.
He became the defence minister in the Vajpayee government and it was under his tenure that the nuclear test in Pokhran was conducted in 1998 and India fought the Kargil war against Pakistan in 1999.
With Alzheimer’s disease afflicting him, he was out of the public eye for close to a decade as his family members nursed him at home.
Tributes poured in for the veteran leader, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying he was frank and fearless, and never deviated from his ideology.
“A visionary railway minister and a great defence minister who made India safe and strong. During his long years in public life, George Sahab never deviated from his political ideology. He resisted the Emergency tooth and nail. His simplicity and humility were noteworthy,” the PM said.
(With inputs from PTI)
Also read: How a ‘viral’ image helped Mangalore’s George Fernandes win Bihar poll in absentia