Jubilee Post News & Views
Jubilee News Desk
Uttar Pradesh assembly election 2022 has a historical connect with 1971. This will be second time when a sitting chief minister will contest election and that too from Gorakhpur and the gap between the two CMs is of 50-years.
As history goes, the first CM was Tribhuvan Narain Singh, who was not a member of Uttar Pradesh Assembly or Legislative Council when he became chief minister in October 1970. He contested from Gorakhpur only.
Then the resignation by Mahant Avaidyanath offered him a chance to get elected to Uttar Pradesh Assembly. Mahant Avaidyanath was supporting the Tribhuvan Narain Singh government, which was a multiparty coalition.
In October 1970, Sanyukta Vikas Dal was formed by Organization Congress, Jan Sangh and Swatantra Party and Bharatiya Kranti Dal, thus gaining majority in Uttar Pradesh house Assembly.
This coalition selected Singh of Congress (O) to be their leader and thus he became Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. One case, namely Har Sharan Verma vs Tribhuvan Narain Singh was decided by a constitutional bench of the Supreme Court in 1971. In that case, the petitioner challenged the appointment of T N Singh as chief minister of UP as at the time of his appointment he was not a member of the legislature of UP.
The petitioner contended that Art. 164(4) should be confined to a case where a minister who is a member of the legislature of the state loses his seat. The idea behind Art. 164(4), he argued, was to give him a period of six months to get himself re-elected.
Tribhuvan Narain Singh hence, became the first Chief Minister to be appointed without being a member of either house of the state legislature. Ram Prakash Gupta was the second person.
Tribhuvan Narain Singh was challenged by Congress-I’s Ramkrishna Dwivedi, who won Gorakhpur’s Maniram seat despite the support of Mahant Avaidyanath to his rival.
The loss in election forced Tribhuvan Narain Singh to resign as Uttar Pradesh chief minister in April 1971. This was the only instance when a sitting chief minister of Uttar Pradesh contested election from a Gorakhpur seat and now in 2022 it will be second sitting CM doing so.
Tribhuvan Narain Singh remained Chief Minister from 18 October 1970 till 4 April 1971. Singh later served as Governor of West Bengal from the late 1970s until 1981. He was born and died in Varanasi. He also served as the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee and as Union Minister of Industry and Steel. The BJP would hope that the history of 1971 does not repeat.
