Before the tape,a distinguished record

Age has never been a barrier for veteran Congress leader Narayan Datt Tiwari. When he was just 17 years old,he participated in the freedom movement,and was even jailed for 15 months with his father.....

Age has never been a barrier for veteran Congress leader Narayan Datt Tiwari. When he was just 17 years old,he participated in the freedom movement,and was even jailed for 15 months with his father. After his release from jail,he enrolled in Allahabad University,where he began his political journey. He was the Secretary of the All India Students Congress from 1945-47,and went on to become the president of Allahabad University Students Union in 1947.

It was a journey that saw him become the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh,the countrys largest state,not once but four times.

Though known as a Congress stalwart,Tiwari started off as a Socialist. In 1952,in the first post-Independence polls to the Uttar Pradesh Assembly,he was elected from Nainital constituency on a Praja Samajwadi Party (PSP) ticket. In the next elections in 1957 too,he was elected on a PSP ticket. The PSP was a party floated by the Socialists of those times,like Jayprakash Narayan and J B Kripalani.

It was only in 1963 that Tiwari joined the Indian National Congress. By then,he was already a name to reckon with in Uttar Pradesh politics,being elected as the Leader of the Opposition in the UP Assembly in 1961. He was also the first president of the Indian Youth Congress for three years,from 1969-71.

In 1976,he became the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh for the first time,by which time he had already held many important portfolios in the state government.

Though he occupied the chief ministers chair for four terms,his stints were rather short. His first tenure lasted for just over a year,from January 1976 to April 1977. His second term was from August 1984 to March 1985. After the victory of the Congress in the 1985 elections,he again became the chief minister. This time,his term stretched from March to September 1985. In June 1988,he became chief minister for the fourth time,and occupied the post till December 1989. As chief minister of Uttar Pradesh,Tiwari was credited with developing the road and bridge network in the state.

From affairs of the state,Tiwaris foray into central politics began in 1980,when he was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time and was given the important Planning portfolio. Thereafter,he went on to hold several important portfolios,including Finance,Commerce and External Affairs. Tiwari was minister for Finance and Parliamentary Affairs in the Charan Singh government.

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By the early nineties,Tiwari had considerable following. In 1984,he resigned from the Congress,launching his own party the All India Indira Congress (Tiwari) with senior party leaders like Arjun Singh and Makhan Lal Fotedar. It was reported that Tiwari had quit the party as he was angry for not being chosen as the prime minister instead of P V Narasimha Rao. But two years later,Tiwari returned to the Congress,when Sonia Gandhi became the party president.

After lying low for a couple of years,Tiwari became the first chief minister of Uttarakhand,continuing in office from 2002 to 2007. He left office in March 2007,after the Congress suffered setbacks in the state,and was appointed Governor of Andhra Pradesh in August 2007.