Former...

The right side of his body was paralysed. “Shri Tiwari was admitted at Max Hospital, Saket for several months and was undergoing treatment for complications related to a brain stroke. He breathed his last at 0250 pm today,” read a statement released by Max.

He was being closely monitored by a team of senior specialists from the departments of neurology and cardiology. “He had several complications and multiple organs were affected that eventually led to the cardiac arrest,” said JD Mukherji, head of neurology at Max, who was Tiwari’s treating physician.

Tiwari’s death marks the passing of a politician from the era of the freedom movement influenced by the Nehruvian growth model that put the public sector at the commanding heights of the economy.

He later became a seasoned administrator as a three-time chief minister of UP.

A staunch Gandhi family loyalist for most of his life, Tiwari had the knack of befriending political foes both within the Congress and from rival parties. “No wonder he had a number of friends among politicians in rival political parties, Bharatiya Janata Party veteran and former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee being one of them,” recalled Uttarakhand state Congress vice president Ramesh Pande.

Tiwari was born to a poor family on October 18, 1925, in Baluti, his mother’s ancestral village in Nainital. His father, Poornanand Tiwari, was a clerk but gave up his job to join the freedom struggle inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s call for a non-cooperation movement against the British. After he finished school, his father expressed his inability to continue funding his education. Undaunted, young Tiwari left home and enrolled himself in Allahabad University, where he dabbled in student politics, acquired a postgraduate degree in political science and was awarded a gold medal.

“By then he had already caught the eye of a leader like Jawaharlal Nehru and his political career started taking wing”, Pande said. Tiwari joined the Congress party in 1963 and won the Kashipur assembly seat two years later and went on to become Uttar Pradesh chief minister in 1976. rent deal also includes customised weaponry.

The deal has also become controversial on account of the fact that one of the offset deals signed by Dassault is with the Reliance Group of Anil Ambani. The Congress claims the earlier deal was scrapped and a new one signed just to provide Ambani this opportunity for an offset deal. Both the government and Reliance have repeatedly denied this.