J&K’s new Governor: A traveler across political spectrum

After the Emergency was withdrawn in 1977, Satya Pal Malik was on the forefront of the campaign against Jagjivan Ram by Charan Singh’s followers.

Written by Pradeep Kaushal

New Delhi | Updated: August 22, 2018 06:56 AM IST

3 min read

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Satya Pal Malik, the new Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, has been in almost all political parties in his long political career. Starting off with late Prime Minister Charan Singh’s Bharatiya Kranti Dal, he has been with the Janata Party, Indian National Congress, Janata Dal, Lok Dal, Samajwadi Party, Lok Dal (Ajit), and the Bharatiya Janata Party. And he has been in the thick of the action during his tenure in almost all these parties. Coming from Meerut, in western UP, Malik was a member of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly from 1974 to 1977. After the Emergency was imposed, he is said to have tried to build a bridge between Charan Singh and Indira Gandhi. The move, however, fell through.

After the Emergency was withdrawn in 1977, Malik was on the forefront of the campaign against Jagjivan Ram by Charan Singh’s followers. He was among the leaders who raked up the dual-membership issue, which implied that politicians belonging to the Jana Sangh constituent of Janata Party be made to choose between their party membership and the RSS.

Also Read | Key challenge is to win people’s confidence: new J&K Governor Satya Pal Malik

The issue eventually led to the formation of the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980, the year Malik got the first of his two consecutive terms in Rajya Sabha – between 1980 and 1992.

He had a stint in the Congress in the 1980s. The emergence of the Jan Morcha, and subsequently the Janata Dal, saw Malik appear as a confidant of Vishwanath Pratap Singh and Arun Nehru. He won the Lok Sabha polls from Aligarh constituency as a Janata Dal candidate in 1989 and was seen as part of V P Singh’s inner coterie, which included the likes of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Nehru.

While he was seen as one of the proponents of the dual-membership theory in the late-1970s, Malik finally found his way into the BJP — he first became a party vice-president and then the Governor of Bihar last year.

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