Daijiworld Media Network
New Delhi, Mar 8: Former Karnataka governor and senior Congress leader Hans Raj Bhardwaj passed away after a cardiac arrest at a hospital here on Sunday evening. He was 83.
Bhardwaj breathed his last at the Max Hospital, Saket, where he was admitted since Wednesday due to kidney-related issues, his family told news agency PTI.
He will be cremated at the Nighambodh Ghat on Monday at 4 pm, his son Arun Bhardwaj said.
He is survived by his wife, a son and two daughters.
Bhardwaj was first elected to the Rajya Sabha in April 1982. He served as minister of state for law and justice from December 1984 to November 1989 and was re-elected to the Rajya Sabha in April 1988. He was then minister of state (independent charge) for planning and programme implementation from June 1991 to July 1992, and minister of state for law, justice and company affairs from July 1992 to May 1996. He was again re-elected to the Rajya Sabha in April 1994 and April 2000, and from May 2004 to May 2009 he served as law minister in the union cabinet under the UPA government. He then served as governor of Karnataka from 2009 to 2014.
Bhardwaj's stint as the governor of Karnataka was marked by controversies as he twice tried to dismiss the government when B S Yeddiyurappa was chief minister and even sanctioned his prosecution on corruption charges - a process later struck down by the state high court. The BJP accused him of corruption and for allegedly appointing tainted people as vice chancellors of universities.
Former union minister Salman Khurshid told IANS: "He was a very independent minded person and I have a deep affection for him because he gave me a lot of knowledge."
He said that Bharadwaj was a person of very strong opinion. "He was an old classical secularist of Congress party and was also bit impatient with modern times," he said.
Bharadwaj was very "set" in his ways and did not get along with people flexible with their ideologies, he added.
"He was very impatient with them... He was a very fine person. He had an uncanny ability to manage the legal system and reach out to enormous number of lawyers. He will be missed dearly," the Congress leader said.
Bharadwaj had questioned the leadership ability of Rahul Gandhi in 2018, saying: "I don't consider Rahul Gandhi a leader yet. He'll understand when he gets a post."
He also said that Gandhi was learning and he will become a leader when public accepts him. He had also targeted the party for indulging in politics of religion as the reason of its failures.
Bharadwaj had his share of controversies during his tenure as law minister in the UPA government.
In the 2G scam, a special court dealing with the case remarked that Bhardwaj's conduct while dealing with the issue relating to granting of new 2G licences was against all established canons, discipline and protocol of government working.
In 2017, special judge O P Saini, while ordering acquittal of former communications minister A Raja and others in the spectrum allocation scam, had expressed discontent on the conduct of the former law minister and termed the law ministry's opinion on the issue as completely outlandish.
The court had said the ministry's opinion to refer to an Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) the matter connected with the issue of new licences and allocation of spectrum to dual technology applicants, led to unnecessary controversy.
Bhardwaj had also got into the controversy after he lashed out against the Congress on a comment made by union minister P Chidambaram about "poor drafting" of the now-scrapped Section 66A of IT Act, alleging Chidambaram was trying to target him.
During his gubernatorial stint, he had also held additional charge of Kerala for a short time.
With IANS Inputs