 "VIRBHADRA SINGH")
Virbhadra Singh
Singh is in trouble now. The Bharatiya Janata Party has alleged that he accepted Rs 1.5 crore and Rs 2.4 crore through cheques in his name and that of his parliamentarian wife, Pratibha Singh, from a private company Venture Energy and Technology. The company was given two extensions in a hydel-power project despite defaulting on the deadline. Singh claims he has committed no wrong and came to Delhi to meet Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Vice-President Rahul Gandhi, who were not available.
Singh has been an efficient chief minister. It was under his tenure that the full electrification of Himachal Pradesh was achieved. The village to last get electricity in the state was Kibber, in Spiti, as long ago as 1988. (It is also one of highest villages in the world to have got a motorable road). Through his political career, Singh managed to resist the temptation of the politics that has been the staple for other state politicians - playing upper Himachal against lower Himachal. Because the needs and wants of the two regions in this hill state are different, there are few politicians who enjoy equal acceptability in the Kangra region (the heart of lower Himachal Pradesh that sends 16 seats to the Assembly) and in Shimla (the centre for upper Himachal Pradesh that just has eight seats in the legislature but enjoys disproportionate influence). If Singh got a four-lane road built for upper Himachal, he also ensured that lower Himachal got a six-lane road. Himachal Pradesh has always had a generally higher rate of literacy than the rest of India, but during his tenure as chief minister, Singh made sure that there was no village which didn't have a primary school.
If there is criticism of him, it is because of his autocratic style. He is the last raja of the Rampur-Bushehr dynasty. Many remember how in 2004 he dropped three prominent leaders from Kangra - Vijai Singh Mankotia, Chandresh Kumari and Brij Bihari Butail - from his cabinet, leading to accusations that he was discriminating against the region. In fact, he had dropped the trio because he suspected they were ganging up against him. He might have been right because soon after, Mankotia left the party to become chief of the Himachal unit of the Bahujan Samaj Party.
It was this same trait that made Sukh Ram, one of Himachal Pradesh's best known politicians, leave the Congress to form his own party. In fact, in 1998, BJP's Prem Kumar Dhumal would have never got the chance to form a government in Himachal Pradesh had the Congress given in to Sukh Ram's condition that anyone but Virbhadra be made the chief minister. That's how incensed colleagues were with Singh's style of functioning. His other big detractor is Vidya Stokes.
Having studied in Bishop Cotton School in Shimla and St Stephen's College in Delhi, Virbhadra doesn't have problems communicating as some of his colleagues do. He's equally at home with government employees as with corporate executives.
But controversy dogs him. If it is the bribery charges this time, earlier it was a public interest litigation charging Singh, when he was steel minister, with massive income-tax violations and an alleged a pay-off to a steel company. The Delhi High Court took cognisance and asked the Central Bureau of Investigation to file a status report. Singh was then dropped from the Union cabinet. Now, the Congress has to device a way to handle this new hot potato.
