Neelam Sanjiva Reddy

Neelam Sanjiva Reddy

Neelam Sanjiva Reddy  pronunciation (19 May 1913 - 1 June 1996) was the sixth President of India, serving from 1977 to 1982. Over the course of a long political career, Reddy held several key offices, as the first and two time Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, a two time Speaker of the Lok Sabha and Union Minister. He remains the only person to be elected to the office of the President of India unopposed.

Neelam Sanjiva Reddy
6th President of India
In office 25 July 1977 – 25 July 1982
Prime Minister	Morarji Desai Charan Singh Indira Gandhi
Vice President	Basappa Danappa Jatti Mohammad Hidayatullah
Preceded by	Basappa Danappa Jatti (Acting)
Succeeded by	Zail Singh
4th Speaker of the Lok Sabha
In office 26 March 1977 – 13 July 1977
Preceded by	Bali Ram Bhagat
Succeeded by	Kawdoor Sadananda Hegde
In office 17 March 1967 – 19 July 1969
Preceded by	Sardar Hukam Singh
Succeeded by	Gurdial Singh Dhillon
Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh
In office 12 March 1962 – 20 February 1964
Governor	Bhim Sen Sachar Satyawant Mallannah Shrinagesh
Preceded by	Damodaram Sanjivayya
Succeeded by	Kasu Brahmananda Reddy
In office 1 November 1956 – 11 January 1960
Governor	Chandulal Madhavlal Trivedi Bhim Sen Sachar
Preceded by	Burgula Ramakrishna Rao(Hyderabad) Bezawada Gopala Reddy(Andhra)
Succeeded by	Damodaram Sanjivayya
Personal details
Born	19 May 1913 Illur, Madras Presidency,British India (now in Andhra Pradesh)
Died	1 June 1996 (aged 83) Bangalore
Political party	Janata Party (1977–present)
Other political affiliations	Indian National Congress(before 1977)
Alma mater	Government Arts College, Anantapur

Education and Family:

Reddy was born in Illur village in Madras Presidency in the present day Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh. He had his primary education at the High School run by Theosophical Society Adyar, Madras. He joined the Government Arts College at Anantapur, then an affiliate of the University of Madras for his higher studies. Much later, in 1958, the degree of Honorary Doctor of Laws was conferred on him by the Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati.

Reddy was married to Neelam Nagaratnamma. The couple had one son and three daughters.

Freedom Fighter:

Reddy joined the freedom struggle following Mahatma Gandhi's visit to Anantapur in July 1929. In 1931, Reddy gave up his studies to become an active participant in the nationalist struggle. He was closely associated with the Youth League and participated in a student satyagraha. In 1938, Reddy was elected Secretary of the Andhra Pradesh Provincial Congress Committee and he held that office for 10 years. During the Quit India Movement, he was imprisoned and was mostly in jail between 1940 to 1945. Released in March 1942, he was arrested again in August of that year and sent to the Amraoti jail where he served time with T Prakasam, S. Satyamurti, K Kamaraj and V V Giri till 1945.

Political career:

Reddy was elected to the Madras Legislative Assembly in 1946 and became the Secretary of the Madras Congress Legislature Party.He was also a Member of the Indian Constituent Assembly which framed the Constitution of India.From April 1949 till April 1951, he served as the Minister for Prohibition, Housing and Forests of the then Madras State.

Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh:

In 1951 he was elected President of the Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee. When the Andhra State was formed the following year, T. Prakasam became its Chief Minister and Sanjeeva Reddy the Deputy Chief Minister. When the state of Andhra Pradesh came into being by incorporating Telengana with Andhra State, Sanjeeva Reddy became its first Chief Minister serving from November 1956 to January 1960. He was Chief Minister for a second time from March 1962 to February 1964 thus serving in all for over 5 years as the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh.

Congress President and Union Minister

Reddy was elected President of the Indian National Congress thrice consecutively at its Bangalore, Bhavnagar and Patna sessions from 1960 to 1962. He was elected to the Rajya Sabha twice. From June, 1964 Reddy was Union Minister of Steel and Mines in the Lal Bahadur Shastri government. He also served variously as Union Minister of Transport, Civil Aviation, Shipping and Tourism from January 1966 to March 1967 in Indira Gandhi's Cabinet.

Speaker of the Lok Sabha

In the general elections of 1967, Reddy was elected to the Lok Sabha from Hindupur in Andhra Pradesh. On 17 March 1967, Reddy was elected Speaker of the Fourth Lok Sabha. Upon his election as the Speaker, he resigned from the Congress Party, to underline the independence of his office. As Speaker he admitted, for the first time, a No-Confidence Motion to be taken up for discussion on the same day as the President's address to a joint sitting of the Houses of Parliament. It was during his tenure that the House for the first time sentenced a person to imprisonment for Contempt of the House. The establishment of the Committee on the Welfare of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes was another achievement of Reddy's speakership. Although he described himself as the 'watchman of the Parliament' and conducted himself with dignity and handled parliamentary business in an orderly and effective manner, he had several hostile encounters with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the House that proved costly when he became, two years later, the Congress Party's nominee to succeed Zakir Hussain as President.

Presidential Election of 1969:

In 1969, following the death of President Zakir Hussain, Reddy was nominated as the official candidate of Congress party. In particular he was seen as the candidate of the old guard of the Congress. Although she had nominated Reddy as the Congress party's presidential candidate, the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, was opposed to Reddy's candidacy. She asked Congress legislators to "vote according to their conscience" rather than blindly toe the Party line, in effect giving a call to support the independent candidate V V Giri. In a tightly contested election held on August 16, 1969, V V Giri emerged victorious, winning 48.01 per cent of the first preference votes and subsequently getting a majority on counting the second preference votes. The 1969 Indian presidential election remains the most closely fought in independent India's history.

Subsequently, Reddy, who had resigned as Speaker of the Lok Sabha to contest the election, retired from active politics and moved back to Anantapur where he took to farming.

Return to active politics:

In response to Jayaprakash Narayan's call for a Total Revolution, Reddy emerged from his political exile in 1975. In March 1977, he fought the General Election from the Nandyal constituency in Andhra Pradesh as a Janata Party candidate. He was the only non-Congress candidate to be elected from Andhra Pradesh.Reddy was unanimously elected Speaker of the Sixth Lok Sabha on 26 March 1977. However he resigned four months later to contest in the presidential elections of July 1977.

Presidential Elections of 1977:

Although Prime Minister Morarji Desai wanted to nominate danseuse Rukmini Devi Arundale for the post, Reddy was elected unopposed, the only President to be elected thus, after being unanimously supported by all political parties including the opposition Congress party. At 65, he became the youngest ever person to be elected President of India. He was also the only serious presidential candidate to have contested twice - in 1969 against V V Giri and in 1977.He was the fourth President to be elected from South India and the third from Andhra Pradesh.

President of India:

Neelam Sanjiva Reddy was sworn in as the sixth President of India on 25 July, 1977. During his term of office, Reddy had to work with three governments under Prime Ministers Morarji Desai, Charan Singh and Indira Gandhi. As President, he appointed Charan Singh as Prime Minister following the fall of the Morarji Desai government with the condition that he prove his majority on the floor of the House. Charan Singh was sworn in on July 28, 1979 but never faced Parliament to prove his majority when the President convened it on August 20. This convention of appointing a Prime Minister in a hung House but with conditions on time to prove majority was later adopted by President R Venkataraman.

Retirement and Death:

Following his Presidential term, Reddy retired to his farm in Anantapur. He died of pneumonia in Bangalore in 1996 at the age of 83. He authored a book, Without Fear or Favour : Reminiscences and Reflections of a President, published in 1989. In 2004, a statue of his was erected at the Secretariat in Hyderabad. The Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy College Of Education in Hyderabad has been named after him.