Rajinder Kaur Bhattal
| Rajinder Kaur Bhattal | |
|---|---|
| 14th Chief Minister of Punjab | |
|
In office April 1996 – February 1997 |
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| Preceded by | Harcharan Singh Brar |
| Succeeded by | Parkash Singh Badal |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 30 September 1945 Lahore, Punjab British India |
| Political party | Congress |
Rajinder Kaur Bhattal is an Indian politician and member of Congress. She is a former Chief Minister of Punjab and the first and so far only female to hold the office of Chief Minister in Punjab. Overall she is 8th female Chief Minister in India. Since 1992 she has won from Lehra Assembly Constituency five terms consecutively.
She was born on 30 September 1945 in Lahore in undivided Punjab to Hira Singh Bhattal and Harnam Kaur. She was married to Lal Singh Sidhu at village Changali Wala, Lehragaga in Sangrur district and had two children, a girl and a boy. Her husband is no more.
In 1994, Bhattal was a state education minister in Chandigarh. Bhattal became the first female Chief Minister of Punjab when she took office after the resignation of Harcharan Singh Brar, serving from April 1996 to February 1997, the eighth female Chief Minister in Indian history. Her initiatives as Chief Minister of Punjab included, in December 1996, a scheme to provide grants of free electricity to small farmers in order to power wells.
After the Congress party lost the February 1997 assembly elections in Punjab, bringing an end to her term as Chief Minister, Bhattal took over as president of the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee from Singh Randhawa in May, and then as leader of the Congress Legislature Party until November 1998, when she was ousted from her position and replaced by Chaudhary Jagjit Singh. Her ousting, amid claims of misleading statements about the involvement of the Congress leadership, was followed by a protracted dispute with Amarinder Singh, who had succeeded her as Punjab Congress president, and who was seen as responsible for her removal. By 2003, Bhattal had publicly pledged to remove Singh from his position as Chief Minister, and was backed by dozens of dissident MLAs from the Congress party. The dispute saw intervention from the central command of the Congress party in New Delhi, with Sonia Gandhi taking a hand in negotiations. Initially the dissident group led by Bhattal rejected any solution other than the removal of Singh.
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