New Delhi, January 9,2021: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday expressed his condolences over the demise of senior Congress leader and former External Affairs Minister Madhavsinh Solanki.
The 93-year-old leader breathed his last at his residence in Gandhinagar in the morning today.
Taking to Twitter, PM Modi said that Solanki played a key role in Gujarat politics for decades and he will be remembered for his rich service to society.
A former journalist, Solanki led the Congress to its largest-ever victory in the legislative assembly in 1985. winning 149 of 182 seats. The record remains till date. Solanki rose to power on the KHAM (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi, Muslim) coalition he stitched in the 1980s. He is credited as the proponents of KHAM, a theory that united these communities in support of the Congress when the Patels had abandoned it, and this is claimed to have kept the Congress in power in the state
An astute politician, Solanki was a member of the legislative assembly of the Bombay state in 1957-60 and then of the Gujarat legislative assembly from 1960-68. He became the chief minister of Gujarat for the first time in 1976. He was a member of the Rajya Sabha from 1988 to 1994, during which he held the portfolios as union minister of Planning (1988-89) and external affairs (1991)
He was again elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1994. Solanki has been the president of the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee three times.
In the Narasimha Rao government, Solanki was appointed Foreign Minister. He kicked up a row when, during a visit to Switzerland in 1992, he allegedly met the Swiss foreign minister and told him that inquiries into the Bofors scandal in India had not produced any result, and that politics was behind the Indian request for assistance in the probe.
He was the longest-serving Chief Minister of the state before Narendra Modi.
