Born on November 6, 1937, Yashwant Sinha attended school and attended university in Patna.
Yashwant Sinha, a former Union minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s cabinet, was named the joint opposition party candidate for presidential elections on Tuesday. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has not yet announced its choice for the July 18 polls.
In a joint statement, opposition party leaders called on the BJP and its allies to support Mr Sinha “so that we can elect a dignified ‘Rashtrapati’ without opposition”.
Born on November 6, 1937, Mr. Sinha attended school and attended university in Patna. In 1958, he completed his master’s degree in political science from Patna University and taught political science at his alma-mater from 1958 to 1960.
In 1960, he joined the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and held various positions during his 24-year tenure.
Mr Sinha eventually resigned from the IAS in 1984 and entered active politics as a member of the Janata party. He was appointed Secretary General of All-India in 1986 and elected a member of the Rajya Sabha in 1988.
When the Janata Dal was formed under the leadership of VP Singh, Mr Sinha was appointed as the Secretary General. He first served as finance minister from November 1990 to June 1991 in Chandra Shekhar’s cabinet, who split the Janata Dal and formed the Samajwadi Janata Party.
Mr Sinha became the BJP’s national spokesman in June 1996 and was reinstated as Finance Minister in March 1998 by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
He always fought Lok Sabha elections from Hazaribagh, his parliamentary constituency in Jharkhand. However, in 2014, he was denied a ticket from Hazaribagh by the BJP, who handled his eldest son Jayant from there.
Mr Sinha announced his retirement from active politics while serving in Patna in 2018. But in 2021, just before the West Bengal Assembly elections, he joined Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress and became the Vice President . He left the party on Tuesday, declaring that it was time for him to work towards greater unity in the opposition.
Mr Sinha is married to Nilima and has two sons and a daughter.
