Arjun Singh
Arjun Singh, ( born
November 5,
1930,
Madhya Pradesh) is a veteran
Congress (I) politician. He is the Human Resources and Development (HRD) minister in the current Indian government headed by
Manmohan Singh, the same post that he held in the early 1990s in the
Narasimha Rao government. He served as a minister in the
Rajiv Gandhi government, and held the post of
Chief Minister of
Madhya Pradesh and
Governor of
Punjab. He was awarded the Outstanding Parliamentarian Award for the year
2000.
Arjun Singh was accused of corruption in what was called by some the
Churhat Lottery case in the 1980s, in which allegations, never proved, were levelled that he had helped set up a phony state lottery.
He has built the Karwa Dam palace . The palace has been differently assessed between 10 to 20 crore although he claims that it cost him only forty lakhs .
Arjun Singh was the
Chief Minister of
Madhya Pradesh when the
Bhopal gas leak occurred in 1984. There have been allegations since that the state administration did not do enough for the victims of the fatal gas leak.
After the
Mumbai train bombings of 2006, he reportedly quoted at a
Cabinet meeting the statements of a former judge of the Maharashtra High Court that an earlier attempt on the headequarters of the Hindu revivalist
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in
Nasik had been a plot set into motion by the Sangh itself.
[{{cite web]| title=Dismiss Arjun Singh, Antulay: BJP | url=http://www.ndtv.com/morenews/showmorestory.asp?slug=Dismiss+Arjun+Singh%2C+Antulay%3A+BJP%0D&id=90187&category=National | publisher=NDTV | date=July 14, 2006 | accessdate=2006-07-14. This follows his denouncement of the Ekal Vidyalayas, one-teacher schools run for the benefit of the tribals of India and associated with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad [1], as communal. http://www.newindpress.com/Column.asp?ID=IE220050527225234&P=oldAdditional controversy was created in 2005 by drafting the proposed 104th Amendment Bill to the constitution, which subsequently became the 93rd Amendment. According to this amendment, which has yet to pass the 'Basic Structure' test of constitutionality by the Supreme Court, all private unaided educational institutes could be asked by their State Governments to reserve seats for designated Other Backward Classes. In early 2006, Mr. Singh also sought to increase caste-based reservation quotas for the so-called Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in the internationally reputed Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management, along with other Indian central government run institutes of higher studies, from 22.5% to 49.5%, a measure which came under intense criticism by the press and by the anti-reservation student community.
The National Knowledge Commission, a body of academics and intellectuals who report directly to the Prime Minister on matters of educational policy, strongly opposed the move. Following a public statement by Singh questioning the Commission's members' knowledge of the Constitution, the NKC also strongly criticised him for what it described as his efforts to "obfuscate" the issue [2].
Arjun Singh plans to impose quotas not just in 32 Central institutions, but also in over 100 deemed universities. The proposed legislation will give the Government unprecedented power over even private unaided institutions - to regulate their fees, selection procedure, and also take punitive action [3].* Indian anti-reservation protests, 2006
* Reservation in India*HRD Ministry's Web Site
*Arjun Singh's Rajya Sabha Web Page
*http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:VGLNctzi4tIJ:www.dailyexcelsior.com/00feb04/edit.htm+Churhat+Lottery&hl=en&gl=nz&ct=clnk&cd=18
*[4]
* Arjun singh's recent interview with Karan Thapar on reservation issue
* Arjun Singh and the Love Goddess!
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