For 28 years, a two-room rented space in Guwahati’s Sorumotoria locality had the distinction of being the residence of Manmohan Singh, the 13th prime minister of India who died at 92 of age-related illnesses in New Delhi on Thursday.
Those two rooms were part of the residence of Hemoprova Saikia, wife of former Assam chief minister and Congress leader Hiteswar Saikia. When Singh was inducted into PV Narasimha Rao’s government at the Centre for a consequential tenure as the Union finance minister in 1991, it also marked the beginning of his three-decade association with Assam. Rao got Singh elected as a Rajya Sabha member from the northeastern state at the suggestion of then chief minister Saikia.
Singh represented Assam in the Rajya Sabha for five terms, from October 1991 till 2019. After the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dislodged the Congress from power in Assam in 2016, Singh was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Rajasthan in August 2019.
“Apart from being a tenant at my mother’s house, his and his wife Gursharan Kaur’s names were enlisted in the voters list of the area. He was very particular about paying his rent, which was a nominal amount, on time and came to Guwahati to cast his vote during Lok Sabha and assembly polls,” Saikia’s son, Debabrata Saikia, Congress legislator and leader of the opposition in the Assam assembly, said.
Singh used to pay rent for the two rooms till 2019, he said.
{{/usCountry}}Singh used to pay rent for the two rooms till 2019, he said.
{{/usCountry}}“When I met him in New Delhi last year to inquire about his health, he (Singh) recollected memories of those years as a tenant in our house and his association with Assam and my father. In the absence of my father, he used to guide me in my political career,” Saikia added.
As a mark of respect and his long association with Assam, the Hiteswar Saikia Foundation, set up by the late chief minister’s family after his demise in 1996, had brought out a coffee table book highlighting Singh’s contribution to the northeastern state. The book — Some Stories Left Untold — was released by Singh himself in New Delhi in 2019.
“There’s a misconception that despite representing Assam in Rajya Sabha for such a long time Singh didn’t do enough for the state. He used to keep track of every development in the state,” Debabrata Saikia, who represents Nazira assembly constituency in Assam, said.
“Whenever he learnt about issues in certain areas like drinking water or electricity being faced in Assam, he made sure enough funds are released from Centre to tackle them. It’s another thing that he never used to highlight these things himself,” he added.
Though Singh stopped being a tenant in 2019, the Saikias have not rented out those two rooms since in memory of the former prime minister’s long association with Guwahati.