The Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party (JKNPP) founder and former legislator, Prof Bhim Singh, passed away at his Sainik Colony residence in Jammu on Tuesday morning. He had been unwell for some time. He was 80. One of the tallest leaders of J&K, Bhim Singh wore several hats: besides being a politician, he was a legal luminary, a human rights activist, an adventurer and an author. In the course of several decades he remained engaged in his political and legal struggles for the cause of secularism and democracy in J&K. 🚨 Limited Time Offer | Express Premium with ad-lite for just Rs 2/ day 👉🏽 Click here to subscribe 🚨 Singh is survived by his wife Jai Mala and son Ankit Love (leader of One Love Party in UK). The JKNPP sources said his body will be kept at the party headquarters in Jammu's Gandhi Nagar and will be then taken to his native Bhugterian village near Ramnagar in Udhampur district for cremation on Wednesday. A Bar at Law from the University of London, Singh was said to be the first Indian to have travelled through 150 countries across the world by a motorcycle from 1967 to 1973. He was also said to be the first Indian to be elected as secretary of the University of London Students Union in 1971. Before returning to J&K to engage in politics, he worked as a professor of International Law at Cambridge University. Singh provided free legal aid to thousands of hapless prisoners, farmers, employees and youths from all over the country and even abroad. He was re-elected as a senior executive member of the Supreme Court Bar Association unopposed in December 2016. Through writ petitions filed by his party’s State Legal Aid Committee in the Supreme Court of India and in Pakistani courts, he secured release of over 700 Indians, Pakistanis and Afghan nationals lodged in jails in the two neighbouring countries. A number of them had been detained for decades. He himself was awarded Rs 50,000 compensation by the Supreme Court in 1985 for his illegal imprisonment by the then J&K government following his suspension as a member of the state Assembly. His efforts to move the apex court and the Election Commission in 1996 were reportedly instrumental in the conduct of J&K Assembly polls then after a gap of nine years. He also successfully moved the top court to get an elected Bar Council set up in J&K in 2017, for the first time, in accordance with the Advocates Act, 1961. Singh was nominated as a member of the National Integration Council (NIC) in 1991 by the then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao and again in 2008 by then PM Manmohan Singh. He had contested, unsuccessfully, the Lok Sabha elections seven times including those against ex-PM Rajiv Gandhi in Amethi and BJP leader L K Advani in New Delhi. He also knew and supported international leaders such as Yasser Arafat of Palestine, whom he first met in 1968, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, whom he met in 1971, deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, and Libya’s dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Saddam had appointed him as one of his lawyers to plead his case before the tribunal, that tried him after his ouster as the Iraqi president. During his 1967-1973 world tour by a motorcycle, Singh crossed the Sahara desert. He had then also met leaders like then Chile president Salvador Allende. In 2011, Singh, as the then chairman of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Council, had come out in support of Gaddafi, appealing to the UN to intervene in air raids on Libya. Born on August 17, 1941, in Bhugterian village, Singh was jailed 54 times, spending altogether eight years in incarceration. He was released from the prison 18 times on the apex court's orders. He had been a leading campaigner against Article 370, which provided a special status to J&K. It was abrogated by the BJP-ruled Centre in August 2019. Singh fought against “regional discrimination” against Jammu during successive governments in the erstwhile J&K state. He first went to jail in 1953 at the age of 12 as he had thrown confectionary at Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, then J&K PM, during the latter's visit to his school. As a political activist, during his college days in 1961-62, he was sent to Jammu Central Jail for six months, where he shared a cell with Sheikh Nazir, who later became a formidable National Conference (NC) general secretary. He was again arrested in 1966 for leading a students' agitation demanding the establishment of a separate university in Jammu, wherein four students were killed and 53 others injured in police firing, teargas and lathi-charge. In 1969, the University of Jammu was opened at Jammu on the lines of the Srinagar-based University of Kashmir. Subsequently, Singh joined the Congress party. In 1973, then PM and Congress supremo Indira Gandhi appointed him as the J&K Youth Congress president. He also became its national general secretary but left the Congress later to float his own party JKNPP in 1982. In the 2002 J&K Assembly elections, the JKNPP won four seats, including all three in Udhampur district, which enabled it to be part of the then coalition government, headed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)'s chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, with his nephew Harsh Dev Singh as the education minister. However, in 2007, he withdrew support to the coalition government, then led by the Congress's CM Ghulam Nabi Azad, citing differences with the PDP. Buy Now | Our best subscription plan now has a special price In November 2020, Singh faced rebellion within the JKNPP with Harsh Dev, who was previously nominated as its chairman, expelling him from the party for meeting the leaders of the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration. However, a fact-finding committee led by party president Balwant Singh Mankotia later revoked his explusion. Next year, Bhim Singh was unanimously elected as the JKNPP president after Mankotia himself resigned from the post. Later, both Harsh Dev and Mankotia joned the Aam Admi Party (AAP). A slew of leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, J&K Lt Governor Manoj Sinha, NC leader Omar Abdullah and PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti expressed their condolences over Singh's demise.
