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New Delhi: Former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao died of cardiac arrest at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here this afternoon (Dec 23). He was 83. The former Prime Minister, who was admited to the AIIMS on December 10 following chest pain and breathlessness and was undergoing treatment, suffered cardiac arrest at 11 a.m. His condition deteriorated thereafter and the end came at about 2.40 p.m. One of his sons Prabhakar Rao was at his bedside. While his wife had predeceased him, he leaves behind three sons, one of whom, PV Ranga Rao, was a minister in Andhra Pradesh, and five daughters. Rao, the first Prime Minister outside the Nehru-Gandhi family to complete a full five-year term in office between 1991 and 1996 had a history of heart problem and had undergone a surgery. Reports coming in said that a large number of people from all walks of life, including politicians cutting across party lines, were making a beeline for the hospital to pay their respects to the departed leader, a Congress stalwart of over six decades standing. Tearful scenes were witnessed at the hospital as well as at the official residence of the former Prime Minister - 9 Moti Lal Nehru Marg, as relatives, friends and close colleagues heard the news of Rao's passing. A pall of gloom also descended in Rao's hometown near Andhra Pradesh's Warangal District on hearing the news. President APJ Abdul Kalam, Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, Congress party president Sonia Gandhi, former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (a close friend of Rao), besides several cabinet ministers, expressed their shock and condolences to members of Rao's family on hearing the news of his death.
Pamulaparti Venkata Narasimha Rao, who was the Prime Minister the country
from 1991 to 1996, was born in 1921. Rao studied at Osmania University
in Hyderabad and at Bombay and Nagpur universities, earning the degrees
of bachelor of science and bachelor of laws. He entered politics as a
Congress Party activist working for independence from Britain. A politician,
poet and a linguist par excellence all his life, Rao was active in the
Indian National Congress during the struggle for independence from British
rule and thereafter. He served as a minister in Andhra Pradesh from 1962
to 1971 and was the state's chief minister from 1971 to 1973 before his
election to the Indian parliament in 1972. A member of the Congress since
1939, he was a Union cabinet minister in the governments of both Indira
Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi from 1980 to 1989, and served as India's Home
and External Affairs Minister. After Rajiv Gandhi's assassination in May,
1991, Rao was chosen to lead the Congress party, and when Congress won
the elections in the same year, he became the country's tenth prime minister
on June 21, 1991. He used his nearly five-year-long tenure to move decisively
toward free-market reforms, reducing the government's economic role, instituting
austerity measures, and encouraging foreign investment. He was often confronted
by Hindu religious unrest and by opposition within his own party. In 1996
a corruption scandal rocked the government. When general elections were
held in May, Rao and Congress were badly defeated, and he lost the prime
ministership on May 10, 1996. He, however, retained the leadership of
the Congress party until late 1996. In 2000, Rao was convicted of conspiring
to buy votes in parliament prior to a 1993 no-confidence vote, but the
conviction was overturned in 2002. The last two years of his life were
spent writing books and fighting several legal battles, in most of which,
he was exonerated. Family and government sources said that Rao would be
given a state funeral. |
