With the departure of Lt. Gen. SK Sinha (retd) as Governor of Assam following his transfer to J&K, the Guwahati Raj Bhawan is likely to lose its pre-eminence as a parallel power center. Whoever is named as Gen. Sinha's successor will find it difficult to follow the interventionist,and often meddlesome, style of functioning preferred by Sinha during his five year plus tenure as Assam's Governor.
Unlike several of his counterparts, Sinha was not content to live in the silent shadows of the stately Raj Bhawan. From the moment he joined as Governor in September 1997, Sinha had been in the thick of one controversy or the other, be it the denial of sanction to prosecute the then chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta in an alleged corruption case or the debatable report on influx from Bangladesh. Throughout his stay in Guwahati, Sinha, a former vice chief of Army Staff, gave enough indications that he loved to be in-charge, often riding rough-shod over the elected government in the state.
Not a man to follow conventions, Sinha gave frequent interviews and made public speeches like a politician. He often attended meetings of the Unified Command and tried to dictate strategies in dealing with insurgency. Sinha's appointment in September 1997 also came as a big boost to the Army which regards him as its own. Army officials had easier access to the Governor and frequently Sinha took inputs from them directly. Although under the Unified command structure, the 4 Corps Commander is supposed to act under the overall guidance of the chief secretary, very often Sinha directly interacted with topofficials.
Sinha's assertive style and penchant for direct intervention had led to charges of "President's rule by proxy,"during the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) rule under Prafulla Kumar Mahanta. With the current incumbent Tarun Gogoi,as well, Sinha had several run-ins. His views on the infiltration of Bangladeshis into Assam and the contentious Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) act, 1983 are in complete variance with the Congress stand leading to a well-publicised public spat between him and chief minister Gogoi.Sinha, who authrored a controversial report on the influx of illegal Bangladeshi migrants into Assam in November 1998, is a strong advocate of repealing the IM(DT) Act, a stand that the Congress is strongly opposed to.
Advertisement
The 77-year old Sinha , who shot to fame when he put in his papers as vice chief of army staff in 1983 after being superseded by General AS Vaidya as Army chief has had a chequered career since then. First he stood for elections to the Lok Sabha in December 1984 from Patna as an independent candidate supported by non-Congress parties. Sinha lost narrowly. When the VP Singh led National Front government came to power in 1989, Sinha was appointed India's ambassador to Nepal. After his stint in Kathmandu, Sinha returned to Patna only to be picked by IK Gujral's United Front Government as Assam Governor.
Advertisement
A close friend of Union Home Minister LK Advani, Sinha was also largely seen as the man who advocated and forced the disastrous BJP-Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) electoral alliance just a month ahead of the 2001 state Assembly elections in Assam. The Congress won a landslide in that contest thanks largely to the division of votes between AGP and BJP, whose state leadership was never happy with the alliance.
But Sinha would also be remembered for his active advocacy in getting some of Assam's lesser-known figures their due at the national level. It was entirely through his efforts that Assam's first chief minister Gopinath Bordoloi was awarded aposthumous Bharat Ratna for his stellar role in preventing Assam from being tagged along to Pakistan in the pre-partition days.
Sinha can also rightfully claim the full credit for bringing a little-known but brilliant military warrior of Assam, Lachit Barphukan, into limelight and giving him the rightful place in the pages of history. As far as Sinha was concerned Barphukan who defeated the Moghuls in the battle of Saraighta, was as good as the famed Maratha Warrior,Shivaji. He may have had to use many of his old Army connections, but Sinha did manage to get a medal instituted in the name of Lachit Barphukan for the best cadet in theNational Defence Academy (NDA) Khadakvasla.
These small but significant gestures made the former vice chief of Army Staff a popular man among the intelligentsia. All in all, Sinha's legacy will be tough for any new incumbent to emulate. It also remains to be seen who replaces him at Guwahati. Several names like former army chief S. Padmanabhan, Supercop KPS Gill, former home secretary BP Singh have been speculated upon but with Gogoi expressing strong reservations against Gill, the Centre's choice may have been narrowed down toPadmanabhan.
