Siddhartha Shankar Ray
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Siddhartha Shankar Ray (born 1920) is an Indian politician associated with the Indian National Congress political party, and known for his hard line on law and order policy. Over the course of his career, he served as the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Governor of Punjab, and former Ambassador of India to the United States of America.
Career
Ray became India's Union Minister of Education & Youth Services on March 18, 1971.
He went on to become the Chief Minister of West Bengal (India) from March 19, 1972 to June 21, 1977. He took office shortly after the Bangladesh Liberation War, and his administration was faced with the problem of resettling over a million refugees in various parts of West Bengal. The civic services of Calcutta in particular found themselves unable to cope.
He was faced as well with the problems caused by the Naxalite uprising. When the Emergency was declared by Indira Gandhi in June 1975, he used the powers afforded to the executive branch by the declaration to send paramilitary forces into rural areas of Bengal, where it was consistently alleged they operated with great brutality. Subsequently, he interned not only the members of the violent Naxalite factions but also the leaders of the mainstream Communist parties, especially the CPI(M), who were his principal opposition in electoral politics in the state.
When the Emergency was lifted and fresh elections declared in 1977, the Congress was voted out of power in the state, and a coalition of Communist parties, the Left Front, was voted in with an overwhelming mandate. This was viewed as a direct comment on Ray's administration, which grew even more pointed when West Bengal was the only state to resist the pro-Indira Gandhi electoral wave of 1980. Ray was subsequently deprived of power in the Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee by the Working Committee, which believed his reputation in Bengal irreparably damaged. The Congress never recovered power in West Bengal, which has repeatedly re-elected the Communists since, most recently in April 2006.
His image as a law-and-order hardliner served him well subsequently, however, when in response to the Khalistan agitation, Rajiv Gandhi sent him to the troubled state of Punjab as Governor. Ray served as the Governor of Punjab from April 2, 1986 to December 8, 1989. During his tenure the security services were once again given a free hand to pursue suspected terrorists in the countryside. When Rajiv Gandhi was voted out of power in 1989, the V.P. Singh government that replaced it was dependent on the Left Front for support. The Left Front demanded Ray's replacement by their own candidate, Nirmal Kumar Mukarji, and Ray was accordingly dismissed. Mukarji went on to oversee the transition to a restarting of the electoral process, and normalcy returned to the Punjab.
When the Congress returned to power, Siddhartha Shankar Ray was India's Ambassador to the United States for about 3 1/2 years, from mid-1992 to February 1996.
Personal
Siddhartha Shankar Ray is married to Maya Ray, who grew up in England, and was referred to as "a noted barrister and former elected official" by Thomas J. Manton, a member of the American House of Representatives.
Siddhartha Shankar Ray is the grandson of Chittaranjan Das, a prominent lawyer and participant in the Indian independence movement.
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