Vishwanath Pratap Singh Prime Minister of India
8th Prime Minister of India
In office 2 December 1989 – 10 November 1990
Preceded by :- Rajiv Gandhi
Succeeded by :- Chandra Shekhar Singh
Born :- June 25, 1931Allahabad, United Provinces, British India
Died :- November 27, 2008 (aged 77) New Delhi, India
Political party:- Janata Dal
Religion :- Hindu
Signature :-
Vishwanath Pratap Singh (25 June 1931 - 27 November 2008) was the 8th Prime Minister of the Republic of India and the 41st Raja Bahadur of Manda.
Early life
He was born in the Rathore Royal Family of Manda to Raja Bhagwati Prasad Singh of Daiya and was later adopted by Raja Bahadur Ram Gopal Singh of Manda in 1936, whom he succeeded in 1941[1]. V. P. Singh studied at Colonel Brown School, Dehradun for five years, and entered local politics in Allahabad during the Nehru era. He married 25 June 1955, Rani Sita Kumari, born 1936 in Deogarh, Udaipur, daughter of Rawat Sanngram Singh II of Deogarh[2]. He soon made a name for himself in the state Congress Party for his unfailing rectitude, a reputation that he would carry with him throughout his career.
Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh
He was appointed by Indira Gandhi as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in 1980, when the Congress came back to power after the Janata Party interregnum. As Chief Minister, he cracked down hard on the dacoity, or banditry, problem, that was particularly severe in the rural districts of the south-west. He received much favourable national publicity when he offered to resign following a self-professed failure to stamp out the problem, and again when he personally oversaw the surrender of some of the most feared dacoits of the area in 1983.
Cabinet Minister for Finance and Defence
Called to the Centre following Rajiv Gandhi’s massive mandate in the 1984 General elections, he was appointed to the pivotal post of Finance Minister, where he oversaw the gradual relaxation of the license Raj as Rajiv had in mind. During his term as Finance Minister, he oversaw the reduction of gold smuggling by reducing gold taxes and the excellent tactic of giving the police a portion of the smuggled gold that they found. He also gave extraordinary powers to the Enforcement Directorate of the Finance Ministry, the wing of the ministry charged with tracking down tax evaders, then headed by Bhure Lal. Following a number of high-profile raids on suspected evaders - including Dhirubhai Ambani [3] and Amitabh Bachchan - Rajiv was forced to sack him as Finance Minister, possibly because many of the raids were conducted on industrialists who had supported the Congress financially in the past. However, Singh’s popularity was at such a pitch that only a sideways move seemed to have been possible, to the Defence Ministry [4].
Once ensconced in North Block, Singh began to investigate the notoriously murky world of defence procurement. After a while, word began to spread that Singh possessed information about the Bofors defence deal [5] that could damage the Prime Minister’s reputation. Before he could act on it, he was dismissed from the Cabinet and, in response, resigned his memberships in the Congress Party and the Lok Sabha [6]
