Happy Birthday Yashwant Sinha: Here are some lesser-known facts about veteran Indian politician

Yashwant Sinha is an Indian bureaucrat and politician who previously served as India’s finance minister under Chandra Shekhar and Atal Bihari Vajpayee governments and then as minister of external affairs from 2002 to 2004 under Vajpayee. When Sinha was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1988, his legislative career officially began. Prior to his departure from the Bharatiya Janata Party on 21 April 2008, Yashwant Sinha was a leading party member. He decided to join the All India Trinamool Congress later in 2021. In June 2022, Sinha resigned from Trinamool Congress after being named the Combined Opposition Parties’ presidential candidate for the 2022 elections. However, BJP-led NDA candidate Droupadi Murmu edged past Sinha to become India’s 15th President on 21 July.

Today, Sinha is celebrating his 85th birthday. On this special occasion, let’s take a look at some of the lesser-known facts about him:

• Sinha was born in a middle-class family in Bihar’s Patna. He received his M.A. in political science from Patna University in 1958, and for the next two years, he served as a professor of political science there.
• Sinha joined the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in 1960, and throughout the course of his 24-year career, held several positions in Bihar, New Delhi as well as abroad.
• In 1984, Sinha left the IAS and entered active politics as a Janata Party member. In 1986, he was named the party’s All-India General Secretary, and in 1988, he was nominated to the Rajya Sabha.
• In 1995, Sinha was elected as the leader of the opposition in the Bihar state legislative assembly after standing as a BJP candidate. He was named finance minister in the cabinet of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in 1998 after winning a seat in the Lok Sabha.
• He was re-elected to the Lok Sabha in the 1999 elections and remained there till 2002 as finance minister. In the 2004 Lok Sabha election, he lost his seat. But later that year, he was re-elected to the Rajya Sabha, which allowed him to quickly return to the legislature.
• A few of Sinha’s efforts during his time as finance minister included lowering bank interest rates, establishing a tax exemption for mortgage interest, freeing up the telecommunications sector, deregulating the petroleum industry and helping fund the National Highways Authority of India.
• By 2009, Sinha was no longer actively involved in BJP affairs. He resigned from his position as the BJP’s vice president, which he had held for two years, as a result of the party’s dismal performance in the Lok Sabha elections that year.
• Sinha made the decision to withdraw his name from the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in favour of his son Jayant Sinha, who won the election from his father’s constituency in Jharkhand.
• In 2015, the highest civilian honour in France, the Officier de la Légion d’Honneur, was awarded to Sinha.
• Sinha left the BJP in 2018 after claiming that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other party officials were endangering democracy.

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