New Delhi: Two-time Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and BJP veteran Kalyan Singh died in Lucknow on Saturday (August 21, 2021) night. Singh, who was undergoing treatment at the Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGI), took his last breath at the age of 89.


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Singh held various organisational posts in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the state and the central level and was also a former governor of Rajasthan. He was instrumental in the rise of the saffron party to power in Uttar Pradesh in the 1990s.


Singh, notably, was the Uttar Pradesh chief minister when the Babri mosque was demolished by a mob of 'karsevaks' in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992. He was among the 32 people who were acquitted in the demolition case in September 2020.



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Several politicians including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and incumbent Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath condoled Singh's demise. 




Paying tribute to the senior politician, Uttar Pradesh BJP also shared an old clip where Singh is seen pledging his allegiance to the Bharatiya Janata Party.


"The sanskaars of the Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party are in the drop of my blood and that is why I wish that I remain in the BJP for the rest of my life and when my life is about to end, my dead body is wrapped in BJP's flag," Singh had said with teary eyes. 



Singh was born on January 5, 1932, and first became an MLA in 1967. He then went on to be the first BJP chief minister of Uttar Pradesh in 1991. He got his second shot at the top post in September 1997, becoming chief minister again under a six-month rotation formula with the BSP. 


(With agency inputs)