Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao has expressed his shock over the death of former union minister P Shiva Shankar. In a message here, the CM recalled the services rendered by Shiva Shankar as a BC leader, Union Minister, Judge and Governor.
The CM has conveyed his heartfelt sympathies to the members of the bereaved family and prayed for the departed soul. The CM has instructed the officials concerned to make arrangements for the official funeral of the departed leader who happens to be from Telangana region. CM has asked the Chief Secretary SP Singh to take care of the arrangements.
P. Shiv Shanker was possibly the most powerful man after the Prime Minister, the two Aruns (Singh and Nehru) and M.L. Fotedar.”
The minister does not exaggerate. Unobtrusively, as is his wont, Punjala Shiv Shanker, has been associated with almost every major political happening during Indira Gandhis regime.
He was a member of the Congress(I) teams sent to supervise the changeover in Maharashtra and Gujarat; he sat in with the members of the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs as they thrashed out the Punjab accord with Sant Longowal; and he took a preliminary look at the opposition’s memorandum against Haryana Chief Minister Bhajan Lal before it was decided to set up a one-man commission to look into it.
His missions have not just been confined to the nation’s boundaries; he has been playing an important role in Rajiv’s attempt to improve relations with India’s neighbours. Following the late June bomb blasts in Kathmandu, he visited Nepal as the prime minister’s special envoy last month. And last fortnight he paid a surprisingly well-publicised visit to Bangladesh to convey Rajiv’s desire to work out another agreement on sharing the Ganga waters.
His role in all these initiatives, for which he was deputed by Rajiv Gandhi personally, has not always been decisive. In the Punjab accord, for instance, he was identified as one of the hardliners who wanted the Akalis to concede more than they were willing to. Eventually, Rajiv ignored his advice.
But in the selection of the Gujarat chief minister to replace Madhavsinh Solanki, Shiv Shanker’s acceptance of Solanki’s hypothesis that a leader from the backward classes should be preferred went a long way in deciding the issue in favour of Amarsinh Chaudhary in preference to assembly speaker Natwarlal Shah.
Shiv Shankar’s change of political fortunes has, in fact, been truly amazing. A leading lawyer from Hyderabad, he came in touch with Mrs Gandhi only in 1977, and generated enough confidence in her to become one of her most senior and trusted ministers.
But when he failed to retain the Medak seat it was expected that he would follow other minister-losers like Mallikarjun and Venkatasubbiah into political oblivion. But the capital watchers missed a crucial signal. In January, when he was not even an MP, he was allotted a bungalow at 5, Safdarjang Lane. when a Rajya Sabha seat fell vacant in Gujarat, Rajiv preferred to disappoint Solanki supporter Prabodh Raval, the former Gujarat home minister, and chose P. Shiv Shanker was possibly the most powerful man after the Prime Minister, the two Aruns (Singh and Nehru) and M.L. Fotedar.”
