Veteran Congress chief Madhavsinh Solanki passes away at 93
Madhavsinh Solanki, a veteran Congress chief and the previous Exterior Affairs Minister of India, who additionally served because the Leader Minister of Gujarat for 4 occasions, passed on to the great beyond on the age of 93 on Saturday.
Solanki rose to energy at the KHAM (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi, Muslim) coalition he stitched within the 1980s.
Solanki stitched the KHAM alliance earlier than the 1980 election that absolutely shifted the facility stability from Patel-Brahmins-Baniyas to OBCs, Dalits and tribals within the caste constellation of Gujarat. To counter Solanki’s OBC and KHAM politics, the upwardly cellular Patel group nurtured the BJP.
A attorney by way of career and Kshatriya from Borsad the city close to Anand, Solanki first changed into Leader Minister for a temporary duration in 1977. Within the 1980 meeting election, the party gained handsomely — 141 of the 182 seats — and the BJP controlled handiest 9.
It used to be the beginning of the generation of caste-based alliances, the start of a procedure to empower marginal backward categories like by no means earlier than.
In 1981, when the higher castes led by way of Patels agitated for 2 months towards his executive and the OBC reservation, Solanki met then Top Minister Indira Gandhi. “When Harijans had been attacked in Gujarat, Mrs Gandhi requested me about it. She heard my facet of the tale and mentioned, ‘That is unjustified agitation. Don’t publish.’ She used to be so supportive of my stand that she organized to ship particular police forces in particular planes from neighbouring states when Harijans had been attacked by way of higher castes. In early 1982, I may just deliver again peace for some time.”
Within the Narasimha Rao executive, Solanki used to be Overseas Minister. He kicked up a row when, right through a consult with to Switzerland in 1992, he allegedly met the Swiss international minister and instructed him that inquiries into the Bofors scandal in India had no longer produced any outcome, and that politics used to be in the back of the Indian request for help within the probe.
