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About V.P. Singh
Born in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh on June 25, 1931, V.P. Singh, also known as Vishwanath Pratap Singh was a poet and painter, who became a renowned political leader in history and also the seventh prime minister of India in the year 1989.
He was born into a zamindar family, and became the 41st King Bahadur of Manda, a royal position that belonged to his family’s legacy. During the year 1969, he was elected into the Legislative Assembly of the state of Uttar Pradesh, and from 1971 until 1974, he served as a member of the parliament in the Lok Sabha.
An eminent educationalist, he used to be Allahabad University Students Union’s Vice President and had also set up an intermediate college called Gopal Vidyalaya in Allahabad.
His political career took a significant turn when he was elected as the Union Deputy Minister of Commerce in the year 1974, and later went on to be appointed as the Union State Minister of Commerce.
In the year 1980, he became the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, and four years later, in 1984, he was appointed as the finance minister of India.
He was sworn in as the prime minister of India in 1989, and one of his most recalled actions during his tenure was when he stopped BJP leader L.K. Advani’s rath yatra in 1990 when the latter was believed to have planted troops in order to demolish a mosque for the construction of a temple at the site.
Singh was diagnosed with cancer in 1998, and breathed his last at the age of 77 on November 27th, 2008.