Madhavsinh Solanki, a veteran Congress chief and the previous External Affairs Minister of India, who additionally served because the Chief Minister of Gujarat for 4 instances, handed away on the age of 93 on Saturday.
Solanki rose to energy on the KHAM (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi, Muslim) coalition he stitched within the Nineteen Eighties.
Solanki stitched the KHAM alliance earlier than the 1980 election that utterly shifted the facility steadiness 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 neighborhood nurtured the BJP.
A lawyer by occupation and Kshatriya from Borsad city close to Anand, Solanki first turned Chief Minister for a quick interval in 1977. In the 1980 meeting election, the celebration received handsomely — 141 of the 182 seats — and the BJP managed solely 9.
It was the beginning of the period of caste-based alliances, the start of a course of to empower marginal backward courses like by no means earlier than.
In 1981, when the higher castes led by Patels agitated for 2 months towards his authorities and the OBC reservation, Solanki met then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. “When Harijans were attacked in Gujarat, Mrs Gandhi asked me about it. She heard my side of the story and said, ‘This is unjustified agitation. Don’t submit.’ She was so supportive of my stand that she arranged to send special police forces in special planes from neighbouring states when Harijans were attacked by upper castes. In early 1982, I could bring back peace for a while.”
In the Narasimha Rao authorities, Solanki was Foreign Minister. He kicked up a row when, throughout a go to to Switzerland in 1992, he allegedly met the Swiss overseas minister and instructed him that inquiries into the Bofors scandal in India had not produced any consequence, and that politics was behind the Indian request for help within the probe.
