Sardar Buta Singh

Buta Singh (born 1934) is a former Union Home Minister under Rajiv Gandhi's Government & more recently governor of Bihar state, India. He took office on November 5 2004. He was the home minister of India during the early 1990s. He is a Sikh and was first elected to the Indian Parliament in 1962.

Controversies

His controversial decision to recommend the dissolution of the Bihar Assembly in 2005 was sharply criticised by the Supreme Court. The court ruled that Mr. Singh had acted in haste and misled the federal cabinet because he did not want a particular party claiming to form the government, to come to power. Mr. Singh however claimed that the party was resorting to unfair means (read horse trading) to secure support to form the government.On January 26, 2006 Singh sent a fax to President Abdul Kalam offering to resign his post. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4650474.stm] . The next day he left office and was replaced by West Bengal governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi.

In 2000 Judge Ajit Bharioke of special court convicted the former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and Buta Singh in the JMM bribery case. [http://www.tribuneindia.com/2000/20000930/main1.htm] The Central Bureau of Investigation had charged Rao, Buta Singh and others with bribing MPs belonging to the Janata Dal (Ajit) and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) for voting in favour of the minority Congress government during the no-confidence motion against it in Lok Sabha in 1993. The decision was later overturned and both Rao and Buta Singh were cleared of the charges in 2002. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1874500.stm]