Presidential polls: From a BJP loyalist to a fierce critic, Yashwant Sinha's political journey

Yashwant Sinha, the bureaucrat-turned-politician, has been named as the joint Opposition candidate for the President's post that goes to the polls on July 18.

While Sinha's candidature may have united the Opposition, the balance is tilting towards National Democratic Alliance's (NDA) Droupadi Murmu, especially in the backdrop of the recent political developments in Maharashtra.

The Opposition seems to bank on Sinha's 'veteranism' as an asset against the NDA nominee as it attempts to mount an ideological contest against the BJP.

Early life

Born in Patna on November 6, 1937, Sinha was the ninth of 11 siblings. At the age of 23, he joined the Bihar cadre of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS). During his 24-year-long stint in Administrative Services, he held multiple posts in the Finance and Commerce Departments. He was First Secretary (Commercial) in the Indian Embassy in Bonn, Germany in the early 1970s.

Political journey

In 1984, Sinha quit his service and joined active politics as a Janata Party member. Two years later, he was appointed the party's all-India general secretary and was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1988. In 1989, Sinha co-founded the Janata Dal and took charge as the party’s general secretary. He later joined the BJP and held important portfolios in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government but finance was known to be his forte.

In 2015, the senior politician received Officier de la Legion d'Honneur, the French government's highest civilian award.

An ardent critic of Narendra Modi and his government's policies, Sinha quit the BJP on April 21, 2018.

In 2021, he joined the Trinamool Congress as its vice president and quit last month to contest the presidential election.

Legacy as FM

Sinha was known as the ‘rollback finance minister’ for rolling back fuel price hikes.
His 1998-99 Union Budget was the first to have been presented in the morning, breaking the colonial-era tradition of presenting Union Budgets in the evenings. He is also credited with expanding the highway network across the country and undertaking the Golden Quadrilateral project - the largest highway project in India and the fifth-longest in the world. He made this possible by increasing the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) funds through a petroleum cess. He also de-regularised the petroleum industry.

No love lost between Sinha & BJP

In 2018, Sinha quit the saffron party alleging that the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre was undermining democratic institutions and declared that he would be severing all ties with the BJP and announced his retirement from active politics.

Since then Sinha has been a vocal critic of the Modi government and its policies such as the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in the years to follow, Sinha launched a 3,000 km Gandhi Peace March demanding the withdrawal of the CAA. Along with fellow BJP critics – former Union minister Arun Shourie and Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan – Sinha filed a joint petition in the Supreme Court seeking a review of its clean chit to the Modi government in the Rafale case. The apex court, however, dismissed all the review petitions.

Sinha’s political career has come full circle, from being a fierce critic of the Congress party and the Left while being in the BJP for over two decades to being a presidential candidate with the support of those very parties.