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Remembering Madhavsinh Solanki: Congress veteran, doyen of Gujarat politics
The four-time CM and former external affairs minister was also credited for introducing the mid-day meal scheme in Gujarat.
By Darshan Desai
If there is one regret that Prime Minister Narendra Modi may have from his stint in Gujarat, it would be that with all his clout he failed to break the yet unbeatable record of four-time former chief minister Madhavsinh Solanki of winning 149 out of 182 state Assembly seats.
The doyen of Gujarat politics and the most successful Congress chief minister walked into oblivion at 94 on Saturday morning as he breathed his last - an indelible loss to the Congress.
The unbeatable 149 seats in Gujarat were the result of Solanki implementing a formidable KHAM (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi, Muslim) theory aligning a whopping 70 per cent of the population under one umbrella. He expanded the reservation system in the state to include Other Backward Classes to cover all types of backward and marginalised communities in Gujarat.
“The KHAM theory was originally conceived by the Congress’ grassroots leader Jinabhai Darji and another veteran Sanat Mehta at Gela-Somnath in Surendranagar district. Solanki is being credited for the theory, but he was the one who effectively put it into action,” said veteran journalist MK Mistry, an eminent English journalism in Gujarat.
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Congress' fall in Gujarat, that began after Solanki’s resignation months after that huge victory in the wake of anti-reservation riots taking a communal turn in 1985, has only continued and the nonagenarian passed away amid its debris.
The whiff of air - howsoever symbolic - that may have been left in the void in the Congress party, has gone with Solanki. The void is complete.
The principal opposition party in Gujarat is yet to see a leader with the class that spawned from his knowledge of the social and democratic values nor has there been anyone with the gravitas of Madhavsinh Solanki. Many a political journalist, researcher, academician and bureaucrat would visit his personal library with over 5,000 books, including some rare ones that he painstakingly sourced from across the world.
His background in literature and journalism is something that has found prominent mention in the tributes from CM Vijay Rupani-led government’s cabinet in an official resolution to pay homage to Solanki.
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Born on July 30, 1927, in Pilundra village of North Gujarat’s Mehsana district, Madhavsinh Solanki was the first to introduce the revolutionary mid-day meal scheme for government school children in Gujarat.
“The Tamil Nadu government under MGR had first introduced mid-day meals. Solanki (as the CM) sent two senior bureaucrats to Chennai to study it. He wasted no time to implement it in Gujarat,” MK Mistry noted.
“Solanki’s contribution towards inclusive education was immense. In those days, the initiative meant a great deal when he instructed his education minister Prabodh Rawal to ensure that every taluka (tehsil) in Gujarat had an ITI (Industrial Training Institute),” Mistry, 85, pointed out.
Former chief minister Shankersinh Vaghela, who grew and resurrected the BJP along with PM Narendra Modi fighting against Solanki and the Congress, said, “It was Madhavsinh Solanki who laid the foundation of the Sardar Sarovar Narmada project that you see today.”
He went on, “I haven’t seen any politician with a rich library that he had. He was a visionary and his departure is a huge loss to Gujarat and the country.”
It wasn’t the Mumbai-Pune toll expressway or the Ahmedabad-Vadodara toll expressway, but the Vadodara-Halol highway leading to Indore that became the first toll road initiated by Solanki.
Solanki, who started his political career way back in 1947, became a chief minister for the first time in 1976. Next, from 1981 to 1985 and 1989 to 1990. He was Union external affairs minister between 1991 and 1992 and also of planning. Solanki’s son Bharatsinh is a senior leader and a former Union minister.
The Gujarat government observed a day’s state mourning, as chief minister Vijay Rupani said Solanki’s death was a huge loss to Gujarat and created a void that was difficult to fill. The Gujarat Congress leaders, right from state president Amit Chavda, working president Hardik Patel, to Leader of Opposition Paresh Dhanani and a battery of others, besides party workers across Gujarat were left in grief by his departure.
