Presidential election of 1969
In 1969, following the death of President Zakir Hussain, Reddy was nominated as the official candidate of Congress party. In particular he was seen as the candidate of theold guard of the Congress. Although she had nominated Reddy as the Congress party's presidential candidate, the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, was opposed to Reddy's candidacy. She asked Congress legislators to "vote according to their conscience" rather than blindly toe the Party line, in effect giving a call to support the independent candidate V V Giri. In a tightly contested election held on 16 August 1969, V V Giri emerged victorious, winning 48.01 per cent of the first preference votes and subsequently getting a majority on counting the second preference votes. In the final tally, Giri had 4,20,077 votes against the quota of 4,18,169 votes required to be elected President and Reddy 4,05,427 votes. The election led to much discord within the Congress Party and culminated in the historic split of 1969 and the subsequent rise of Indira Gandhi in Indian politics. The 1969 Indian presidential election remains the most closely fought in independent India's history.
Subsequently, Reddy, who had resigned as Speaker of the Lok Sabha to contest the election, retired from active politics and moved back to Anantapur where he took to farming
Return to active politics
In response to Jayaprakash Narayan's call for a Total Revolution, Reddy emerged from his political exile in 1975. In January 1977 he was made a member of the Committee of the Janata Party and in March of that year, he fought the General Election from the Nandyal constituency in Andhra Pradesh as a Janata Party candidate. He was the only non-Congress candidate to be elected from Andhra Pradesh. Reddy was unanimously elected Speaker of the Sixth Lok Sabha on 26 March 1977. However he resigned a few months later to contest in the presidential elections of July 1977. Reddy's second term as Speaker lasted 3 months and 17 days and remains till date the shortest tenure for anyone to have held that post.
Presidential election of 1977
Although Prime Minister Morarji Desai wanted to nominate danseuse Rukmini Devi Arundale for the post, Reddy was elected unopposed, the only President to be elected thus, after being unanimously supported by all political parties including the opposition Congress party. At 65, he became the youngest ever person to be elected President of India. He was also the only serious presidential candidate to have contested twice - in 1969 against V V Giri and in 1977. 37 candidates had filed their nominations for the presidency of whom 36 were rejected by the returning officer. Following these disqualifications, Reddy remained the only validly nominated candidate in the fray which made elections unnecessary. Reddy thus became the first person to be elected President of India without a contest. He was the fourth President to be elected from South India and the third from Andhra Pradesh.
President of India
Neelam Sanjiva Reddy was elected, unopposed, on 21 July 1977 and was sworn in as the sixth President of India on 25 July 1977. During his term of office, Reddy had to work with three governments under Prime MinistersMorarji Desai, Charan Singh and Indira Gandhi. Barely a month into office Reddy announced on the eve of India's thirtieth anniversary of Independence that he would be moving out of the Rashtrapati Bhawan to a smaller accommodation and that he would be taking a 70% pay cut in solidarity with India's impoverished masses.
Morarji Desai government
Relations between Reddy and Desai soon soured over the latter's promotion of his son, Kanti Desai, in politics and over Desai's communication with Chief Ministers Vengala Rao and Channa Reddy on the issue of land ceilings in Andhra Pradesh.Following mass defections from the Janata Party and from the cabinet, Morarji Desai's 30-month old government ended in July 1977 after he handed in his resignation to President Reddy before a no-confidence motion could be tabled against his government in Parliament.
Charan Singh government
As President, Reddy appointed Charan Singh as Prime Minister following the fall of the Morarji Desai government with the condition that Singh prove his majority on the floor of the House before the end of August. Charan Singh was sworn in on 28 July 1979 but never faced Parliament to prove his majority when the President convened it on 20 August. This convention of appointing a Prime Minister in a hung House but with conditions on time to prove majority was later adopted by President R Venkataraman. Following Charan Singh's resignation, Reddy summonedChandrashekhar and Jagjivan Ram to Rashtrapati Bhavan to look into the possibility of forming an alternate government but convinced that they would not be able to form one, he went along with Charan Singh's advice and dissolved Lok Sabha, calling for mid term polls. Singh was asked to continue as the caretaker prime minister till a new government was sworn in after the elections. Reddy's decision was met with angry denunciations and protests by members of the Janata Party who even threatened to have him impeached.
Indira Gandhi's return to power
In the elections of 1980, Indira Gandhi's party the Indian National Congress (I) was returned to power winning 351 seats in the Lok Sabha with neither the Janata Party nor Charan Singh's Lok Dal winning the 54 seats needed for recognition as the official opposition in Parliament. Indira was sworn in as Prime Minister by Reddy for what would become her last term in office in January 1980.] As president, he signed an ordinance that gave the new government wide powers to jail people for up to a year without trial under preventive detention and ordered the imposition of President's rulein nine opposition ruled states on the advice of the government.
Retirement and death
Reddy was succeeded as President by Giani Zail Singh who was sworn in as President on 25 July 1982. In his farewell address to the nation, President Reddy criticised the failure of successive governments in improving the lives of the Indian masses and called for the emergence of a strong political opposition to prevent governmental misrule. Following his presidential term, the then Chief Minister of Karnataka Ramakrishna Hegde invited Reddy to settle down in Bangalore but he chose to retire to his farm in Anantapur. He died of pneumonia in Bangalore in 1996 at the age of 83. His samadhi is at Kallahalli near Bangalore. Parliament mourned Reddy's death on 11 June 1996 and members cutting across party lines paid him tribute and recalled his contributions to the nation and the House.
Reddy authored a book, Without Fear or Favour : Reminiscences and Reflections of a President, published in 1989. In 2004, a statue of his was erected at theSecretariat in Hyderabad. The character of chief minister Mahendranath in former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao's novel, The Insider, draws on Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy's career in Andhra Pradesh and his political rivalry with Kasu Brahmananda Reddy. While the book portrayed him as a serial fornicator, Ramnika Gupta, aCPI(M) trade unionist and politician, accused Reddy of having raped her when she met him at an AICC session to discuss the nationalisation of mines in Dhanbad.
The Postal Department of India released a commemorative stamp and special coverin honour of Reddy on the occasion of his birth centenary. The Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy College Of Education in Hyderabad has been named after him. As part of the centenary celebrations of his birth, the Government of Andhra Pradesh has announced that it will rename the Andhra Pradesh State Revenue Academy, Reddy'salma mater the Government Arts College, Anantapur and the Government Medical College, Anantapur after the former president.
No comments:
Post a Comment