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Journalism of Courage
Accounting for 80 of the Lok Sabha’s 543 seats, and a 403-member Assembly, Uttar Pradesh, with its over 15 crore voters, is India’s most politically significant state. Since January 25, 1950, when the United Provinces was renamed as Uttar Pradesh, the state – through 17 Assembly elections — has determined the course of national politics, throwing up a legion of stalwarts, chief ministers, and Prime Ministers. Of its 21 CMs though, only Yogi Adityanath, Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati have completed a full five-year term, reflecting the intense volatility of its politics. In the line-up of CMs, also lies the truth about the state’s caste equations. Ten of its 21 CMs have been Brahmins or Thakurs. The remaining include three Yadavs, three Baniyas, one Lodh, one Jat, one Kayasth, one Dalit and one Sindhi. A series looking at UP’s political history and changes through its CMs.
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Born in a Nainital village on October 18, 1925, Narayan Datt Tiwari, like Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna, went to Allahabad for his studies. In 1947, he became president of the Allahabad University Students Union.
Tiwari held a slew of key portfolios in political parties and in government, at the state and central levels, in the course of his long public life marked with many twists and turns. He was sworn in as the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister four times, although he could never complete his full tenure. After Uttarakhand was carved out of UP, Tiwari also became the CM of the new state, completing this time his entire five-year term.
Tiwari was elected to the UP Assembly from Nainital for the first time in 1952 as a Socialist Party candidate, and in 1957 as the Praja Socialist Party (PSP) nominee, but lost in 1962 on the PSP ticket. He joined the Congress party in 1963, but lost in the 1967 election from Kashipur on its ticket. In 1969, however, he returned to the Assembly by wining from Kashipur as a Congress candidate, winning from the same seat in 1974 and even in 1977. During the 1977-79 Janata Party government, he was Leader of the Opposition in the UP Assembly.
The Congress leadership installed Tiwari as the UP CM for the first time on January 21, 1976 (during the Emergency), 52 days after the imposition of President’s rule following Bahuguna’s removal as the CM. Before becoming the 9th CM of the state, Tiwari had served as a minister in the governments of Chandra Bhanu Gupta, Kamlapati Tripathi, Bahuguna and Chaudhary Charan Singh. In his first stint as the CM, he could however continue only until April 30, 1977, as the Congress was routed in the post-Emergency general elections.
Tiwari took his oath as the UP CM for the second time on August 3, 1984, when the Congress leadership decided to remove Sripati Mishra from the post. Subsequently, when the Congress returned to power after the Assembly polls, he was again sworn in as the CM on March 11, 1985. But, barely six months later, then Prime Minister and Congress president Rajiv Gandhi asked him to resign, replacing him with the Gorakhpur-based Thakur leader Vir Bahadur Singh on September 24, 1985. However, on June 25, 1988, the Congress replaced Vir Bahadur Singh with Tiwari, who thus took over as the UP CM for the fourth time. His four chief ministerial stints together amounted to less than four years.
Tiwari’s track-record as the UP CM is notable for the establishment of industrial areas like NOIDA in 1976 during his first stint and GIDA (Gorakhpur Industrial Development Authority) and SIDA (Sataharia Industrial Development Authority, Jaunpur) during his last stint in late 1980s. The Congress lost the 1989 Assembly elections when he was the CM, and could not return to power in the state so far.
He was elected to the Lok Sabha from Nainital in 1980 and also became a Rajya Sabha member later. In the Congress-led central governments he handled key portfolios including finance, external affairs and commerce and industry. In the1989 Assembly elections, he contested from Haldwani seat and clinched it, but the Congress could not win the polls. In 1991 too, amid the BJP wave, he won from the same seat.
Following Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination amid the 1991 Lok Sabha polls, Tiwari had emerged as one of the front-runners for the PM’s post in the event of the Congress’s return to power. Tiwari, however, lost the election from his Nainital seat at the hands of the BJP’s first-time contestant Balraj Pasi by just over 11,000 votes.
While Tiwari remained active in UP politics, the Congress was undergoing an upheaval with PV Narasimha Rao steering the party and the government as the PM and party president. For the 1996 UP Assembly polls, Rao decided to have an alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) despite just 126 seats allotted to the Congress out of a total of 425 seats. Tiwari quit the Congress in protest against this decision. Along with his old associates like Arjun Singh, he then formed the All India Indira Congress (Tiwari) and won Nainital seat as its candidate in the 1996 Lok Sabha elections.
Tiwari returned to the Congress fold again in 1998 after Rao’s ouster but lost his Nainital seat to the BJP’s Ila Pant (daughter-in-law of first UP CM GB Pant). In the 1999 polls, he again won from Nainital, but in 2002 the Congress leadership asked him to take over as the CM of the new state, Uttarakhand, his home turf.
Tiwari thus became the Congress’s first CM of Uttarakhand. He completed his full chief ministerial tenure this time, from March 2, 2002 to March 7, 2007. As the CM, Tiwari was elected to the state Assembly in 2002 from Ramnagar seat, which was vacated by party MLA Yogambar Singh. After the Congress lost the Uttarakhand polls in 2007, the party-led UPA government appointed him as the Andhra Pradesh governor. He however had to step down in December 2009 as the governor in the wake of an alleged sex scandal in the Andhra Raj Bhawan.
In 2014, at the age of 88, Tiwari got married to Ujjwala Shekhar after acknowledging himself as the biological father of her son Rohit Shekhar following a ruling by the Delhi High Court. On January 19, 2017, he along with Rohit joined the BJP. He passed away on October 18, 2018. Rohit was murdered on April 16, 2019, with his wife Apoorva Shukla charged in the case.
