Jaswant Singh

Some Lesser Known Facts About Jaswant Singh

• Jaswant Singh entered politics in the late ’60s.

• He was one of the founding members of the political party, Bharatiya Janata Party.

• Bhairon Singh Shekhawat is considered to be his political mentor.

• Singh was said to be one of the longest-serving parliamentarians of India. He was a member of either of the houses consecutively from 1980-2014.

• Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee appointed him as India’s single representative to hold the long-term dialogue with the USA, aftermath of India’s nuclear tests of 1998. The outcome of this was very useful for both countries.

  

• In the year 2001, Jaswant was honoured with the Outstanding Parliamentarian Award.

• In 2012, he was the candidate for the post of Vice-President for the NDA Government. However, he lost to Hamid Ansari (UPA’s Vice presidential candidate).

• In 2014, his party did not field him from any constituency for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, so he contested as an Independent candidate from his constituency of Barmer in Rajasthan. When he did not withdraw from the elections, he was expelled from the BJP on 29 March 2014. However, he lost the elections to Col. Sonaram Choudhary.

• On 7 August 2014, Jaswant suffered a severe head injury after he slipped in the washroom of his residence. Since then, he had been in a state of ‘coma’ till he died on 27 September 2020.

• Apart from being a sound politician, he had also authored many books such as Defending India (1999), Khankhana Nama (2006), A Call to Honor: In Service of Emergent India (2006), The Audacity of Opinion (2012), etc.