Yashwant SinhaHis political career is over. From being a sharp critic of the Congress and the Left as a BJP leader for more than two decades joint opposition candidate 18 in july presidential electionsupported by both.
Shri Sinha was born in Patna on 6 November 1937 as the ninth of 11 siblings. His father was an advocate in the Patna High Court. At the age of 23, Mr. Sinha joined the Indian Administrative Service and was allotted the Bihar cadre. Fourteen years into the job, in 1974, responding to a call for “total revolution” from Jai Prakash Narayan, Mr. Sinha wanted to leave the service. He writes in his autobiography, Relentless, that he was turned down by a family that was completely dependent on his salary and many leaders including JP himself.
The high point of his bureaucratic career was his tenure as the Chief Minister of Bihar and Principal Secretary to Samajwadi Karpoori Thakur in 1977. In 1984, while serving as Joint Secretary in the Central Government, he resigned to join politics. Through a mutual friend, he met Chandrashekhar, who was heading the Janata Party. Chandrashekhar was his first guru and guide. After his disastrous defeat from Hazaribagh in the 1984 general election, in 1988, Chandrashekhar ensured that Mr. Sinha got a Rajya Sabha seat. When Chandrashekhar became prime minister in November 1990, Mr Sinha was chosen as his finance minister – at a time when the country was going through its worst financial crisis. Mr. Sinha wrote in his biography that if he had known the true magnitude of the problem, he would not have taken charge. He earned the controversial distinction of being a finance minister who pledged gold abroad as security for foreign currency loans. The loan had become necessary as India only had reserves to fund three weeks’ worth of imports.
By the early 1990s, Chandrashekhar’s political fortunes were slipping and with no future for himself, Mr. Sinha switched to the BJP. He left his first master at his lowest. In 1993, a day after Diwali, Mr. Sinha joined the BJP, which LK Advani termed as a “Diwali gift” for the party. He had a promising start. Soon after joining the BJP, he was invited to the national executive of the party. Mr. Advani remained his biggest supporter and shielded him from criticism for his non-RSS background. He led the BJP legislature party in Bihar, where he was elected over Sushil Modi.
He had to resign from his post after his name cropped up in the hawala case, but the party compensated him for the post of national spokesperson. The awards kept coming. In the 1998 Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, the prime minister was keen to appoint Jaswant Singh as the finance minister, but he lost the election. Mr. Advani persuaded Vajpayee to allot the portfolio to Mr. Sinha instead.
Although Mr. Advani was his closest ally in the BJP, Mr. Sinha was the first to attack him for the “Jinnah was a secular man” remark that he made in June 2005. Mr Advani’s remarks eventually led to his resignation as the BJP. President in December of that year.
strong BJP
When Mr. Sinha was asked whether Mr. Advani’s resignation would create a void in the BJP, he said the BJP would emerge stronger. However, Mr Sinha insists that his remarks were not a personal attack, but merely ideological differences—the work was done. The wire was broken. He has bitterly complained in his autobiography that because of this episode he lost his opportunity to become the leader of the party in the Lok Sabha.
But this was not the last time he was challenging the BJP leadership and testing its patience. In 2009, he wrote a letter to the then BJP President Rajnath Singh, following the party’s successive defeat in two general elections. He accused the leadership of holding back from introspection and fixing accountability. He wanted all the office bearers of BJP to resign and a new team should be elected. This was his own version of the Kamaraj plan. Naturally, his idea was rejected, no one in the party was in a mood to make concessions to him. Mr. Singh issued gag orders and Mr. Sinha was removed as party spokesperson.
In 2013, he once again challenged the BJP leadership. This time the party president was Nitin Gadkari whose term was coming to an end. Many in the party assumed that he would return despite reports of corruption allegations. “I felt that in view of the allegations, he should not be re-elected to this position,” Mr. Sinha writes in Relentless. Though he asked for the nomination form, he never filed it. But that was enough for the party to sideline him. His dwindling role in party affairs at the central level had an impact on his position in the party in Jharkhand. In 2014, he did not get a party ticket to contest from Hazaribagh. Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi wanted people above the age of 75 to retire gracefully. Mr. Sinha was about to turn 77 just months before the election. It was the end of the road for Mr. Sinha. He still rushed to Mr. Modi and Mr. Singh’s place for a ticket for his son Jayant. After a long stint outside Parliament, Mr Sinha began working with the Center for Dialogue and Reconciliation, a group formed by Wajahat Habibullah. He made two visits to Jammu and Kashmir as part of the group. At the end of his first visit, he briefed Home Minister Rajnath Singh, but by December 2016, after his second visit, the government had stopped him altogether. His request to meet PM Modi was denied and Mr Singh also refused to meet him. “My own marginalization within the BJP was now complete. Not only this, I had no role in the party. I also had no relation with the people in the government,” he writes.
When his son was a Minister of State in the Union Finance Ministry, the father started criticizing the Modi government’s economic policies continuously. He resigned from BJP on 21 April 2018. He tried to set up an anti-BJP platform, the Rashtra Manch, but failed to create a buzz. In 2021, he joined the Trinamool Congress and became its vice-president. Although it was widely believed that he would secure a Rajya Sabha seat, the party did not oblige. But as a somewhat mild compensation, the Trinamool successfully lobbied him to be the joint candidate for the presidential election.
The day his candidature was announced, his son Jayant Sinha, who is a BJP MP in the Lok Sabha, said he would not support his father in the race. He said that his constitutional duty is towards his party and election is not a family affair. Mr. Sinha enjoys the support of opposition parties, but as the numbers continue to grow, the election is proving to be a non-contest.