V. P. Singh

Biography

Vishwanath Pratap Singh was born in 1931 into a Rajput landowning family in Allahabad district and was adopted as heir to the Raja of Manda, inheriting the title at ten. He studied at the Colonel Brown Cambridge School in Dehradun, took arts and law degrees at Allahabad University and a science degree at Fergusson College in Pune.

He joined the Congress in 1969 and was elected to the Uttar Pradesh assembly, then to the Lok Sabha in 1971, becoming a deputy commerce minister in 1974 and commerce minister in 1976-77. Indira Gandhi made him chief minister of Uttar Pradesh in 1980, where he cracked down on banditry until he resigned in 1982. Under Rajiv Gandhi he was finance minister from December 1984, eased licensing rules and pursued tax evaders with raids on prominent businessmen, which led to his move to the defence ministry in January 1987. There he began looking into arms deals as the Bofors scandal broke; he was dismissed within months and left the Congress.

Known as 'Mr. Clean', he founded the Jan Morcha and, on 11 October 1988, the Janata Dal, and led the National Front coalition. With outside support from the BJP and the Left it formed the government after the 1989 election, and he became prime minister on 2 December 1989. His government's release of militants to free the kidnapped daughter of the home minister, the start of the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus, and above all his implementation in August 1990 of the Mandal Commission's job quotas for backward castes, which set off violent protests, marked his term.

After he had L. K. Advani arrested to halt the Ram Rath Yatra, the BJP withdrew its support and he resigned in November 1990. He lost the 1991 election, declined the premiership in 1996, and later withdrew from office-holding while remaining an outspoken critic. He died in 2008 after a long struggle with multiple myeloma.