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ND Tiwari, the veteran politician with a knack for befriending rivals

Hindustan Times, Dehradun | By
Oct 18, 2018 06:58 PM IST

ND Tiwari was the only Indian politician to serve as chief minister of two states.

The only Indian to be chief minister of two states, Narayan Dutt Tiwari, who died on his 93rd birthday Thursday, grew from the youngest jailed freedom fighter to a seasoned administrator and a consummate but affable politician with a knack of befriending his political foes.

Chief minister of Uttar Pradesh for three times in the 1970s and 1980s, he was the last Congress leader to head the crucial state. He also became the first elected chief minister of Uttarakhand after its first assembly polls in 2002, and is acknowledged to have contributed much to development of the hill state carved out of Uttar Pradesh in 2000. He is also so far the only to have completed a full term as chief minister in the state.

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In the Congress for virtually his entire political career, he got along with politicians across the spectrum. “No wonder, he had a number of friends among politicians in rival political parties, former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee being one of them”, recalls Congress Uttarakhand unit vice president Ramesh Pande. It was a rare trait which, he feels, had its roots in Tiwari’s humble origins and a life full of struggles. He was also staunch Gandhi family loyalist.

“He (Tiwari)”, the longtime associate of the veteran politician recalled, “overcame all odds owing to his extraordinary intelligence and political acumen” to carry both his supporters and detractors along. “Or else”, says Deepak Balutia, Tiwari’s nephew and a Congress leader, “it wouldn’t be possible for him to stand out in the fiercely competitive world of politics despite his humble origins.”

Born in a poor family on October 18, 1925 at Baluti, his mother’s ancestral village in Nainital, his father Poornanand Tiwari was a government clerk who, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s call for non-cooperation, left his job to join the freedom struggle. “Tiwarji was the youngest freedom fighter as he was sentenced to jail for participating in the freedom movement when he was hardly 15 years old”, said Pande. “In fact, he and his father remained incarcerated in Nainital jail for quite some time,” he added.

However, after he finished his schooling, his father expressed his inability to continue his son’s education citing his limited means. Undaunted, young Tiwari left home and enrolled himself at Allahabad University. “During those days I didn’t have enough money to buy vegetables, so, I used to bake paranthas using oil, instead of ghee, and eat them” recalled Tiwari at a public meeting at Ramnagar some years back.

A good orator, Tiwari stood out as a student leader following his election as the general secretary of the Allahabad University Students’ Union. A student of political science, he passed his post-graduation exam with distinction and was awarded a gold medal. “By then he had already caught the eye of a leader like Jawaharlal Nehru and his political career started taking wings”, Pande said.

Tiwari, who initially made his political foray with the Praja Socialist Party in 1952, joined the Congress in 1963, won the Kashipur assembly seat two years later and went on to become Uttar Pradesh chief minister in 1976, a post he held thrice. He won the Lok Sabha election from Nainital in 1980 and became a minister in the Indira Gandhi government besides holding several positions including the Planning commission deputy chairman. He also held several key portfolios including those of external affairs, finance and commerce in the Rajiv Gandhi cabinet.

It was believed that Tiwari would become the Prime Minister after the 1991 general elections, owing to his proximity to the Gandhi family, had he not lost from the Nainital Lok Sabha seat in 1991. In fact, so fiercely loyal was he to the Gandhi family that he formed Congress (Tiwari), along with senior party leaders Arjun Singh and Sharad Pawar following Sonia Gandhi’s differences with then Congress president Sitaram Kesri.

She chose him for the post of chief minister of Uttarakhand in 2002. Tiwari didn’t disappoint her. Even leaders of rival parties appreciate his five-year stint. “He (Tiwari) gave a sound footing to this small fledgling state…Hardly any development happened after he went out of scene”, said BJP veteran and former chief minister BC Khanduri in an interview to HT ahead of the 2017 assembly polls.

But his twilight years were not controversy-free. A sex scandal allegedly involving him when he was Andhra Pradesh governor led to him quitting, while a long-drawn paternity suit filed by his biological son Rohit Shekhar in 2008 kept dogging him. Eventually, he accepted Rohit as his son.

Tiwari, who was in virtual political retirement, had announced his support for the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the 2017 assembly elections in Uttarakhand. However, in September that year, he was hospitalised after suffering a brain stroke and remained there till his death.

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