A policeman in Raj Bhavan

While it may have been the first time Rajeswar targeted Mayawati since she took over as the Chief Minister, the country’s first-ever IPS officer to become a Governor had a history of run-ins with her predecessor Mulayam. His outspoken positions on various issues — which critics said often crossed the line of decorum for a governor, and the Samajwadi Party called “unconstitutional” — put him in confrontation with the Government.

It was on May 21, 2007, that Rajeswar — during an address to the Assembly and while elaborating upon the priorities of the newly installed BSP Government in the state — first vowed to root out corruption in civil service transfers and postings.

A year and four months later, on September 21, 2008 — while addressing a conference of governors in New Delhi — he spoke out against successive state governments frequently transferring bureaucrats, giving the example of a district magistrate who had been shifted 27 times in his 10-year service.

A 1947 post-graduate in Economics from Presidency College, Madras University, Rajeswar joined the Indian Police Service in 1949 and was posted in his home state Andhra Pradesh. In 1962, he joined the Intelligence Bureau as an assistant director and served in Sikkim and Bhutan during 1963-67 as an officer on special duty (OSD) and advisor, respectively.

After serving as deputy director and joint director at the IB headquarters for over a decade, Rajeswar was promoted as IB director in February 1980 and held the post for three years. He was posted as Lt Governor of Arunachal Pradesh in August 1983.

In July 2004, the UPA Government replaced Vishnu Kant Shastri with Rajeswar as the Governor of Uttar Pradesh. The then state Government under Mulayam very often found him a tough customer to deal with, whether it was the issue of Maulana Ali Jauhar University or the rechristening of Lucknow University as Chandra Bhanu Gupta University.

Always forthright, he talked about the rampant “gun culture” in UP and castigated the state police for their illegal activities in connection with “land and house grabbing”. He even took a swipe at Amitabh Bachchan when the latter, featuring in an election commercial of the Samajwadi Party, said: “UP mein hai dum kyonki zurm yahan hai kum (UP is the ideal state with crime rate being low)”.

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