Chandra Shekhar, India’s eighth prime minister, only served in the position for a little over seven months, but he is still regarded as a dignified and astute leader.
He was an Uttar Pradesh farmer’s son who was born on July 1st, 1927, and he was always renowned for his revolutionary zeal.
Shekhar was first chosen to represent Uttar Pradesh in the Rajya Sabha in 1962; he joined the Indian National Congress three years later. After only two years in the organisation, in 1967, he was appointed general secretary of the Congress Parliamentary Party.
He quickly rose to prominence as a voice of opposition within the party, and in 1975—despite being a member of Congress—he was detained when the Emergency was imposed.
He soon abandoned Congress and joined the Janata Party following that. He won the 1989 elections in both his native district of Ballia in Uttar Pradesh and the neighbouring district of Maharajganj in Bihar. Except for a brief interval from 1984 to 1989, he had served as a member of parliament since 1962.
He served as India’s seventh prime minister between 10 November 1990 to 21 June 1991. He is the second prime minister to be elected for such a brief period of time after Chaudhary Charan Singh.
Shekhar also undertook a padyatra (marathon walk) from Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu to Rajghat, the resting place of Mahatma Gandhi, in New Delhi in 1983. The rally started on 6 January 1983 and was completed on 25 June 1983 and he covered a distance of nearly 4,260 km.
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