Jaswant Singh: News

Jaswant Singh was a former Indian Army officer, a former Union Minister, and a former member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He was born in Rajasthan and was an alumnus of the National Defence Academy (NDA), Khadakwasla. He went on to serve in the army but quit in the 1960s to pursue a career in politics. He was one of the founding members of the BJP, which was carved out of the erstwhile Janata Party. Singh was said to be a close aide of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and was awarded key portfolios in his Cabinet between 1999-2004. He was the External Affairs Minister from 1999-2002, during which the Indian Airlines flight IC 814 was hijacked, and jailed terrorists had to be released by India in exchange for the safety of the passengers. Singh was also appointed the Finance Minister in 2002 and continued in the post till 2004. Although he was revered by Vajpayee, the same fondness was not expressed by the rest of the party members. Singh was twice expelled by the BJP: once when he wrote a book that went against the party’s beliefs and again due to differences with the then Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje in 2014. A keen reader, Singh penned several books during his lifetime. He suffered a head injury at his home in 2014 and, after a prolonged illness, died in September 2020.