ARJUN SINGH

He joined the Congress in 1960 and ever since then has been a loyal party worker, except for a brief period when he joined the Congress (Tiwari), following a dispute with Narasimha Rao.

Singh has thrice been included in the union cabinet. He was first given a ministerial post in 1985 by Rajiv Gandhi. He served as a commerce minister under him. Later, he became the human resources and development (HRD) minister in P V Narasimha Rao's government in 1991. Dr Manmohan Singh also gave him the HRD ministry after the Congress came back to power in May 2004.

During his early political days Singh founded the Cosmopolitan Institute of Public Affairs in Bhopal and was the deputy leader of the Indian delegation to the World Youth Congress held in Moscow in 1964. He has also been a convener of Madhya Pradesh Youth Congress from 1965 to 1970. Singh has held many other important positions: he was a member of the Indian delegation to the United Nations in 1969 and represented India at the Human Rights Seminar organised by the United Nations in Belgrade in 1970.

He was sworn in as the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh in 1980. The seasoned politician was appointed the governor of Punjab in 1985 at the height of militancy in the state. As the governor he paved the way for the Rajiv-Longowal pact, also known as the Punjab Accord, that attempted to bring peace in Punjab.

Singh touched the controversial issue of reservation for backward classes in education in 2005, when he drafted and got Parliament to pass the 104th amendment to the constitution. As par the amendment all private unaided educational institutes will have to reserve seats for social groups decided by the government of the day. In early 2006 he also sought to increase the reservation for the other backward classes (OBCs) in the central institutions and universitties, including the internationally reputed Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Management.