The veteran politician’s career has been plagued with numerous scandals overshadowing his administrative abilities.
It is a story that is certain to get an ‘A’ certificate if it ever comes before the Censor Board. At 86, Narayan Datt Tiwari is perhaps the oldest politician in the world to get involved in an alleged sex scandal that has almost ruined his political career. In India, he is the only Governor to have been asked to quit by a junior bureaucrat, after embarrassing footage was aired on television in Andhra Pradesh until the High Court put a stop to it. Tiwari claims he has been framed and is a victim of technology. Maybe.
What most people find surprising is how such a scandal did not act as a punctuation mark much earlier in his career. The Congress maintained its refrain of “innocent-till-proven-guilty” even after an individual called Rohit Shekhar filed a paternity suit in the Delhi High Court some months ago, claiming Tiwari was his father, an allegation denied by the former Andhra Pradesh Governor. Shekhar got the full support of his mother, Ujjawala Sharma, daughter of Sher Singh, a former Union minister from Haryana.
Just when he was about to complete his tenure as the first elected chief minister of Uttarakhand (2002), the veteran Congress leader faced another allegation: Closeness with a young Gorkha girl, who was granted a ministerial rank. She used to frequent the residence of the chief minister without security checks. At the time, it was said that she was working at the behest of Tiwari’s detractors. Hard to say why she was elevated.
A Bhopal-based magazine made scurrilous allegations that Tiwari was close to an Assamese woman who was single. This created a flutter in Uttarakhand’s political circles. But Tiwari remained the senior most politician in the state.
During the 2007 assembly elections, top Garhwali singer Narendra Singh Negi’s musical VCD Nauchhami Narayana hit the market. This was a political satire on Tiwari and his association with women. The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) used the VCD as a campaign tool against the Congress during the election campaign. The stories never seemed to end. But Tiwari made it to Governorship. Not one woman has filed sexual harassment charges against him. It is possible that it was all consensual. The Congress said: “We’re all adults” — nudge nudge, wink wink.
Unfortunately, Tiwari’s respect for women has overshadowed his administrative talent. He is the only politician to have been chief minister of both Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. While he was chief minister of UP thrice, it was just for short periods: From January 1976 to April 1977, from August 1984 to September 1985, and from June 1988 to December 1988. He did a lot of work in developing the road and bridge network of UP. In the five years from 1985 to 1990, during which he was CM twice, UP’s capital expenditure (as a percentage of total expenditure) was as high as 30 per cent. From 2000 onwards it has hovered between 15 and 20 per cent. Interest payments made by the state as a percentage of total expenditure were around 9 per cent during this period. From 2000, this figure was upwards of 20 per cent. Although his successor Vir Bahadur Singh must get his share of the credit for stabilising UP’s finances, the creation of the New Okhla Industrial Development Authority (NOIDA) was Tiwari’s brainchild.
Tiwari moved to the Centre when the Congress’s fortunes began to dwindle in UP. The 1990s dawned with the Prime Ministership of PV Narasimha Rao, a job that Tiwari thought he should have got. But that was not to be — much to his shock he had lost the Lok Sabha election in 1991 by 800 votes. He agreed to serve under Rao, a colleague with whom he had much in common, but found the experience unbearable. He quit the Congress in 1995 with Arjun Singh, Sheila Dikshit, Rangarajan Kumaramangalam and a handful of other similarly discontented leaders and formed the Congress (Tiwari). The new party’s first convention was held at Talkatora Maidan in Delhi. Sonia Gandhi promised to attend but never showed up. It was Tiwari’s worst hour.
In 1996, Rao led the Congress to one of its worst electoral performances. Tiwari rejoined the Congress when Sonia Gandhi decided she must take matters in hand. When Uttarakhand had its first assembly elections in 2002, Tiwari was the obvious choice for chief ministership. He played a vital role in getting the central industrial package complete with a slew of tax benefits which led to the industrialisation of both Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand after 2003.
Some top-notch companies like Tata Motors, Mahindra and Mahindra and Bajaj Auto came to Uttarakhand to set up shop not just because of the central package but also because of the Tiwari factor. Tiwari personally requested Rahul Bajaj to set up the new Bajaj motorcycle unit at Pantnagar.
Rumours about his social life swirled.When it was suggested by a member of his staff to a woman entrepreneur eager to get mining leases as far back as September, that His Excellency might be pleased if some of her friends were brought to the Raj Bhavan to meet him, the matter was dragged out into the open on the day the Congress was celebrating the 125 th anniversary. Matters might never have come to such a pass had YS Rajashekhar Reddy not died. But the procurer of gubernatorial favours felt she had been taken for a ride, and Tiwari did not enjoy the same rapport with the current CM K Rosiah that he had with Reddy, and the deal was not clinched, leading to matters spilling out on television screens.
Since Tiwari is now saying he was a victim of a conspiracy, the question is, who are the conspirators. It is well-known that Tiwari was the biggest stumbling block in the way of some Congress leaders, particularly Harish Rawat, who is now a Union minister. Rawat, who has been hoping for two decades that Tiwari would bow out, finally had to change his constituency to get round him.
And now, Tiwari has finally settled down in Dehradun. He is meeting politicians cutting across the political spectrum, telling them he will bounce back. How, it is hard to say.
