Siddhartha Shankar Ray

Siddhartha Shankar Ray ( _bn. সিদ্ধার্থ শংকর রায়) (born 1920) is an Indian politician and distinguished Barrister associated with the Indian National Congress. He is known for his hardline on law and order policy. Over the course of his extremely illustratrious political career, he has served as the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Governor of Punjab, and India's Ambassador to the United States of America.

Biography

He is the grandson of Chittaranjan Das, an extremely successful and influential Barrister and Founder-President of the Swaraj Party, which had a short but eventful career in council politics in the 1920s. Ray's younger sister is Justice Manjula Bose, one of the first two women judges of the Calcutta High Court. Ray is married to Maya Ray, who grew up in England, and was referred to as "a noted barrister and former elected official" by Thomas J. Manton, a member of the United States House of Representatives.

Education

Ray was educated at Presidency College, Calcutta, and then was called to the Bar in England. While in college, he captained the Presidency College cricket team.

Career

Ray started his political career as a Cabinet Minister in Bidhan Chandra Ray's ministry in West Bengal. Later, he became Union Cabinet Minister of Education & Youth Services of the Government of India on March 18, 1971.

He went on to become the Chief Minister of West Bengal from March 19, 1972 to June 21, 1977. He took office shortly after the Bangladesh Liberation War, and his administration was faced with the problem of resettling over a million refugees in various parts of the state. The civic services of Calcutta in particular found rehabilitation of the Bangladeshi refugees to be an uphill task.

As Chief Minister, he was faced with problems caused by the Naxalite uprising. When the Emergency was declared by Indira Gandhi in June 1975, he used the powers given to the executive branch to send paramilitary forces into the rural areas of Bengal, where it was alleged that the police operated with brutality. Subsequently, the government interned not only the members of the violent Naxalite factions but also the leaders of the mainstream Communist parties, especially the CPI(M), who were his principal opposition in electoral politics in the state.

When the Emergency was lifted and fresh elections declared in 1977, the Congress was voted out of power in the state, and a coalition of Communist parties, called the Left Front, was voted in with an overwhelming mandate. This was viewed as a direct comment on Ray's administration, which grew even more pointed when West Bengal became the only state to resist the pro-Indira Gandhi electoral wave of 1980. Ray was subsequently deprived of power in the Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee by the Working Committee, which believed his reputation in Bengal had been irreparably damaged. Since the election of 1977, the Congress has not recovered power in West Bengal, which has repeatedly re-elected the Left Front, with the CPI (M) as the main party, most recently in April 2006.

His image as a law-and-order hardliner served him well subsequently, when in response to the Khalistan agitation, Rajiv Gandhi sent him to the troubled state of Punjab as Governor with independent charges. Ray served as the Governor of Punjab from April 2, 1986 to December 8, 1989. During his tenure the security services in the state were once again given a free hand to pursue suspected terrorists in the countryside. When Rajiv Gandhi was voted out of power in 1989, the V.P. Singh government that replaced it was dependent on the Left Front for support. The Left Front demanded Ray's replacement by their own candidate, Nirmal Kumar Mukarji, and Ray was accordingly removed. Under Mukarji's tenure as Governor, return to electoral process began in the Punjab, which helped normalcy return to the state.

When the Congress returned to power once again at the Centre, in 1991, Siddhartha Shankar Ray was sent as India's Ambassador to the United States. He remained in the USA from 1992 to 1996.