Sunderlal Patwa, the former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, died

Sunderlal Patwa, the former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, died at a private hospital in Bhopal on 28 December 2016. He was 92.

The veteran Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and two-times chief minister of Madhya Pradesh is considered as a political mentor of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

Sunderlal Patwa

• He was born on 11 November 1924 at Kukdeshwar in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh.

• He was one of the founding pillars of BJP in the undivided state.

• He was appointed as Chief Minister of the state for a brief period of two months in 1980 (20 January to 17 February 1980) as a member of Janta Party and again from 5 March 1990 to 15 December 1992, as a leader of the BJP. His second tenure was curtailed by the imposition of the President’s rule in 1992.

• In 1997, he was elected to the Lok Sabha from Chhindwara after a by-poll but lost the seat in 1998 general elections. In the by-poll elections, he defeated Congress strongman Kamal Nath from his home turf, which was taken back during the general elections.

• In the general elections of 1999, Patwa won the Lok Sabha seat from Hoshangabad and became a Cabinet Minister in the then government led by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

• His nephew Surendra Patwa is Minister for Culture and Tourism in the incumbent BJP-led state government.

The state government has announced a three-day state mourning after Patwa’s death.