Bansi Lal Legha (26 August 1927 – 28 March 2006) was an Indian independence activist, senior Congress leader, Chief Minister of Haryana, former Defence Minister of India, and the architect of modern Haryana.[1] Bansi Lal was part of the famous Lal trio of Haryana which also included 'Tau' Devi Lal and Bhajan Lal, that form the major Political families of Haryana.[2]
Lal was elected to the Haryana State Assembly seven times, the first time in 1967 from Tosham. He served three separate terms as Chief Minister of Haryana: 1968–75, 1986–87, and 1996–99. Bansi Lal was considered a close confidante of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay Gandhi during the Emergency era of 1975-1977.[2]
He served as the Defence Minister of India from December 1975 to March 1977, and had a brief stint as a Minister without Portfolio in the Union government in 1975. He also held the Railways and Transport portfolios.
He set up Haryana Vikas Party after parting ways with the Indian National Congress in 1996. He returned to Congress in 2004, and helped the Congress to win the 2005 Assembly elections.[2]
He was born on 26 August 1927 to Choudhary Mohar Singh and Shrimati Vidya Devi[3] belonging to Hindu Jat community[4]in the village of Golagarh in Bhiwani district, British Punjab (now Haryana). Following his marriage, Lal had two sons, Surender Singh, and Ranbir Singh Mahendra.[5]
The mother of Bansi Lal belongs to the Village Rudrol of Charkhi Dadri district of Haryana, India.
Bansi Lal did his BA in arts, followed by LLB (law degree), for which he studied at the Punjab University Law College, Jalandhar.[3]
Bansi Lal became the Chief Minister of Haryana four times in 1968, 1972, 1986 and 1996. He was the third chief minister of Haryana after Bhagwat Dayal Sharma and Rao Birender Singh. He became Haryana chief minister for the first time on 31 May 1968 at the age of 41 making him the youngest chief minister in the country at the time, and remained in office till 13 March 1972. On 14 March 1972, he occupied the top post in the state for the second time and was in office till 29 November 1975. The third and fourth times he was appointed chief minister was from 5 June 1986 to 19 June 1987 and 11 May 1996 to 23 July 1999.
Bansi Lal was elected to the state assembly seven times, the first time being in 1967. After Haryana was formed in 1966, much of the state's industrial and agricultural development, especially creation of infrastructure, took place due to Lal's initiatives. He was elected to the state assembly for seven times in 1967, 1968, 1972, 1986, 1991 and 2000.
He was responsible for electrifying all villages in Haryana during his tenure as chief minister in the late sixties and seventies. He was also the pioneer of highway tourism in the state – a model later adopted by a number of states. He is regarded by many as an "Iron man" who was always close to reality and took keen interest in the upliftment of the community. Lal became one of the first Chief Ministers to visit Israel, when he led a delegation of agriculturalists and sarpanches to the country in 1971.
Even before the emergency he ruled the state of Haryana in an authoritarian fashion, within the first six and a half years of his rule as chief minister, the Haryana police took into custody more than 143,000 people, including many of his political opponents.[7] He was known to dislike journalists and press especially those critical of him. Two months before the emergency he sent his goons with a senior municipal officer to demolish the offices of Chetna, a Bhiwani-based newspaper which was critical of him, and one day after the Emergency was declared arrested its editor Devabrata Vasisht along with his father.[8] In other instances he tamed press critical of him like the Tribune at Chandigarh, by denying it government advertisements and using the police to fine vehicles that carried the paper to Haryana.[9]
In 1974, Bansi Lal's son, Surender Singh along with a police escort stormed into the house of Bhanwar Singh, a student union leader at Bhiwani college, in Rewasa. They dragged Bhanwar, his sister, and his grandmother, the two siblings were stripped naked and made to lie on the same cot, while Bhanwar's grandmother was kicked to death. The journalist Makhan Lal Kak who reported this story was locked up on the very first day of the emergency, while the deputy superintendent who took part in this was given a promotion.[7]
Bansi Lal also brought the Maruti car project to Haryana, which was Sanjay Gandhi's pet project, he provided over 297.3 acres of land for Maruti factory in the district of Gurgaon, of which 157 acres belonged to the Ministry of Defense, and 140 acres were highly fertile and populated land that belonged to many farmers.[10] He also provided Maruti a government loan to cover the costs of this purchase.[9] To this end 15,000 farmers were evicted.[11]
Bansi Lal did not contest the assembly elections in 2005 but his sons Surender Singh and Ranbir Singh Mahendra were elected to the state assembly. Surender Singh died in a helicopter crash near Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh on 31 March 2005.
Lal was in the limelight when Emergency was imposed by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975. He was a confidante of Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay Gandhi during the controversial Emergency days in 1975. He was part of a cabal around Sanjay Gandhi, along with V C Shukla, Om Mehta, et al., which came to be known as 'the Emergency caucus'. This group, led by Sanjay Gandhi, was said to be responsible for various harsh steps during the Emergency.[12]
He was the defence minister from 21 December 1975 to 24 March 1977 and a minister without portfolio in the Union government from 1 December 1975 to 20 December 1975. The Shah Commission of Inquiry which was formed at end of the Emergency noted that Lal often misused his official position for personal reasons.[13]
Lal died in New Delhi on 28 March 2006 at the age of 78. He had been unwell for quite some time.[14]
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