Arun Jaitley remembers George, the ‘dissenter’

Union Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday penned a tribute for his former colleague and socialist icon George Fernandes, recalling anecdotes and events that formed part of the Opposition’s narrative as it took on the Congress in the four decades since the Emergency was imposed in 1975.

In “George Saheb as I knew him”, Jaitley recounted the days when he was Fernandes’s Cabinet colleague during the NDA’s first tenure under Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his earlier association with him as a student activist during Emergency.

1967 South-Bombay polls

“George

saheb once narrated to me his story, the entire tale of 1967 South-Bombay elections. That election would be an education for any student of psephology or electoral politics. SK Patil was the unquestioned leader of Mumbai, then Bombay. He was a Union Minister and Congress party’s Treasurer. He had won his South-Bombay seat several times by large margins. Nobody believed that Patil could ever be defeated, till a 36-year-old President of the Bombay Taxi Union, George Fernandes, announced that he would challenge Patil in the elections. All the Opposition parties supported George,” narrated Jaitley.

“George’s first task was to make people realise that Patil was not invincible. Posters, banners, stickers on the taxies, outside apartments were put up, all carrying one line

“Patil can be defeated” . The media asked SK Patil for his comments on the same.

“Patil inappropriately replied, “Only God can defeat me” . Prompt came the response campaign of George. The next slogan was: ‘God does not vote, only you do. So, only you can defeat Patil.’ The voters dislike arrogance and defeating Patil became the flavour. With the support of the Opposition and the unions, George secured a victory and entered Parliament,” he said.

Expressing his admiration for the socialist icon who was a “dissenter” and whose idealism sometimes “overtook political pragmatism”, Jaitley recounted a historic meeting of the political prisoners in Tihar jail when Indira Gandhi announced general elections on January 19, 1977. “All the political prisoners in Tihar jail had a meeting. While everybody else favoured participation and contesting the elections, George was a dissenter. He wanted to boycott. He believed that this was going to be a make-belief farcical election through which Indira Gandhi would earn legitimacy and continue her dictatorship and hence the Opposition by contesting must not give legitimacy to the Elections,” said Jaitley.

‘Most austere of leaders’

He recalled how Fernandes declined to contest elections and it took Morarji Desai who came to the Tis Hazari courts during his trials to get him to sign the nomination papers. Fernandes famously won this election from Muzzafarpur in Bihar while he was still in jail.

Jaitley described Fernandes as the “architect of alliance formation” during the Vajpayee era and defended him in the face of corruption charges in the Tehelka Tapes case and the alleged scam relating to the purchase of coffins.

“George led the most austere of lives. He took up causes which nobody espoused and pursued them with all vigour,” said Jaitley.