- Balwantrai Mehta
Balwantrai Mehta (
February 19 ,1899 -September 19 ,1965 ) was the secondChief Minister ofGujarat ,India . He was a valiant freedom fighter, social worker and pioneer of concept ofPanchayati Raj (local government). He was a soldier in theBardoli Satyagraha . His greatest contribution were in the sphere ofprincely states ' peoples' fight for self-rule. His name is conspicuously linked with democratic decentralization.Pre-independence
He was born in
Bhavnagar , Gujarat. There he rose in grassroots politics. Coming in contact with likes ofMahatma Gandhi andLala Lajpat Rai , he joinedIndian independence movement . During this struggle, the British government many times imprisoned him.Post-independence
After the independence he was twice elected as a
Member of Parliament in India'sLok Sabha . As the Chairman of Estimate committee he produced the report on local self-governance and was hailed as the Father ofPanchayat Raj.Gujarat
He succeeded Dr. Jivraj Mehta as the Chief Minister of Gujarat in 1963. In the 1965 India-Pakistan war, he went for inspection of the Gujarat border along with his wife Shrimati Sarojben, pilot J. M. Engineer and six other crew members. On September 18, 1965, he was travelling in a civilian Dakota aircraft over
Kachchh district of Gujarat when two Pakistani fighter planes chased his aircraft and fired on it. It is said that Pilot J. M. Engineer tried to crash plane in the sea but plane crashed couple of miles before reaching the sea. He is the first and probably only Indian politician, who happens to be died in battle by enemy action.He also started Bhartiya Vidya Bhawan. The institution was started to give world class education and Indian values to children of India.
Department of Post, Government of India has issued a special postage stage of face value
INR 3.00 to commemorate his 100th birth anniversary onFebruary 19 ,2000 . cite web
title = Special postage stamp on Balwantrai Mehta, Dr. Hrekrushna Mahtab and Arun Kumar Chanda
url = http://pib.nic.in/archieve/lreleng/lyr2000/rfeb2000/r17022000.html
accessdate = 2008-01-08
archiveurl = http://www.webcitation.org/5UhRnbnvb
archivedate = 2008-01-08
publisher = Press information bureau, Govt. of India
format = html
language = English]References
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