Charan Singh

Chaudhary Charan Singh चौधरी चरण सिंह
Charan Singh in 1978
5th Prime Minister of India
In office 28 July 1979 – 14 January 1980
President	Neelam Sanjiva Reddy
Deputy	Yashwantrao Chavan
Preceded by	Morarji Desai
Succeeded by	Indira Gandhi
Minister of Finance
In office 24 January 1979 – 28 July 1979
Prime Minister	Morarji Desai
Preceded by	Haribhai Patel
Succeeded by	Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna
3rd Deputy Prime Minister of India
In office 24 March 1977 – 28 July 1979 Serving with Jagjivan Ram
Prime Minister	Morarji Desai
Preceded by	Morarji Desai
Succeeded by	Yashwantrao Chavan
Minister of Home Affairs
In office 24 March 1977 – 1 July 1978
Prime Minister	Morarji Desai
Preceded by	Kasu Brahmananda Reddy
Succeeded by	Morarji Desai
Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh
In office 3 April 1967 – 25 February 1968
Governor	Biswanath Das Bezawada Gopala Reddy
Preceded by	Chandra Bhanu Gupta
Succeeded by	President's rule
In office 18 February 1970 – 1 October 1970
Governor	Bezawada Gopala Reddy
Preceded by	Chandra Bhanu Gupta
Succeeded by	President's rule
Personal details
Born	Chaudhary Charan Singh (1902-12-23)23 December 1902 Noorpur, United Provinces, British India (now in Uttar Pradesh, India)
Died	29 May 1987(1987-05-29) (aged 84) New Delhi, India
Political party	Janata Party (Secular) (1979–1987)
Other political affiliations	Hindu Mahasabha Indian National Congress (Before 1967) Bharatiya Lok Dal (1967–1977) Janata Party (1977–1979)
Spouse(s)	Gayatri Devi (died in 2002)
Children	Satya Wati, Ved Wati, Gyan Wati, Saroj Verma, Ajit Singh, Sharda Singh
Alma mater	Agra University
Religion	Hinduism

Chaudhary Charan Singh
(1902-12-23)23 December 1902
Noorpur, United Provinces, British India

Chaudhary Charan Singh (23 December 1902 – 29 May 1987) was the Prime Minister of the Republic of India, serving from 28 July 1979 until 14 January 1980.

Charan Singh was born in a Jat family in 1902 in village Bhadola of Ghaziabad District in Uttar Pradesh Charan Singh entered politics as part of Independence Movement motivated by Mohandas Gandhi. He was active from 1931 in the Ghaziabad District Arya Samaj as well as the Meerut District Indian National Congress for which he was jailed twice by the British. Before independence, as part of the 1937 United Provinces Assembly, he took deep interest in the state of laws that were detrimental to the village economy and he slowly built his ideological and practical stand against the exploitation of tillers of the land by landlords.

He became particularly notable in Uttar Pradesh since the 1950s for drafting and ensuring the passage of what were then the most revolutionary Land Reform laws in any state in India under the tutelage of the then Chief Minister Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant; first as Parliamentary Secretary and then as Revenue Minister responsible for Land Reforms. He became visible on the national stage from 1959 when he had the strength of conviction to publicly oppose the unquestioned leader and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's socialistic and collectivist land policies in the Nagpur Congress Session. Though his position in the faction ridden UP Congress was weakened, this was in a way the starting point of the middle peasant communities across castes in North India looking up to him as their spokesperson and later as their unquestioned leader.

The leader of the Bharatiya Lok Dal, a major constituent of the Janata coalition, he was disappointed in his ambition to become Prime Minister in 1977 by Jayaprakash Narayan's choice of Morarji Desai, not to seek power for himself but to enable him implement his revolutionary economic programs in the interest of the rural economy. Unfortunately, few amongst his rural based part had the intellectual heft to fully comprehend his wide-ranging agenda to remake Indian society and economy, and this weakness dogged him his entire career specially in Delhi. Urban intellectuals were mostly beholden to either the communist / socialist models, or were neo-liberal and capitalist and hence looked askance at his uniquely Indian solution.