Satya Pal Malik
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A brief biography
As in 2023
April 16, 2023: The Indian Express
In his half-century as a politician, starting out as an MLA in the 1970s, jumping several parties and outliving various turns of history, Satya Pal Malik has hung around in the margins of power. His glory days were as Governor of Jammu and Kashmir – a post with greater powers than in other states, and which he would become the last to hold, before the state of J&K was broken into two Union territories.
Four years later, it’s these years that keep Malik in the news, as he continues to drop “revelations” from his time in J&K, including his latest claims regarding “lapses” ahead of the Pulwama attack which led to the death of 40 CRPF personnel.
Earlier, while he was still the Meghalaya Governor – after first moving into the Goa Raj Bhavan from J&K – Malik had left the Narendra Modi government red-faced by consistently attacking it over the farm laws, before these were repealed. In his late 70s, Malik was seen as nursing political ambitions and appealing to his Jat, farmer base.
A senior Haryana BJP leader, on the condition of anonymity, had told The Indian Express then that while Malik wanted to emerge as “a hero in the Jat community of western Uttar Pradesh (to which he belongs)”, the party knew better than to remove him as Governor, which was anyway an unpalatable option. “The BJP has passion and patience,” he said.
A BJP leader claimed that Malik had spoken out of “frustration” as he was “expecting to build a political career in the backdrop of the farmers’ agitation”. He said, “It was more of frustration than of concern.”
On Malik’s grouse against the Modi regime, the BJP leader said: “As the J&K Governor, Malik was like its CM. But then he was shifted to Goa (in November 2019) as Governor, which might have upset him. And his transfer from Goa to Meghalaya (in August 2020) was seen as a further demotion.”
Hailing from Baghpat in western UP, Malik first served as an MLA in the state Assembly in 1974-77, having been elected on a ticket of Chaudhary Charan Singh’s Bharatiya Kranti Dal. In 1980, he was named to the Rajya Sabha by the Charan Singh-led Lok Dal. But in 1984, he joined the Congress, which in turn sent him to the Rajya Sabha in 1986.
In the wake of the Bofors scam, he resigned from the Congress in 1987 and joined V P Singh. In 1989, he won the Lok Sabha election from Aligarh as a Janata Dal candidate, and in 1990, served a short term as the Union minister of state for parliamentary affairs and tourism.
In 2004, Malik joined the BJP and unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha elections, losing to then RLD chief Ajit Singh from Baghpat.
During its first term, the Modi government appointed Malik head of a parliamentary team that looked into the land acquisition Bill. His panel recommended against the Bill, and the government went on to relegate the major reform initiative to cold storage.
After he had held several senior posts in the party, the Modi government appointed Malik as the Bihar Governor in October 2017 and transferred him to J&K in August 2018. Malik was the first politician appointed to the post since the start of the militancy in Kashmir. It was during his J&K tenure that the Modi government scrapped Article 370.
After the end of his gubernatorial assignment in Meghalaya in October 2022, Malik had declared that he would support the RLD and Samajwadi Party in UP. Speaking to reporters at his village Hisawada in Baghpat, he said he had no intention of joining active politics, but wished to be a “mentor” to the RLD and SP, and to fight for the welfare of farmers “who had been at the receiving end of the anti-farmer policies of the Modi government”.
Malik also expressed apprehension that since he was no longer protected by virtue of being a Governor, he may face probes from central agencies. However, he declared: “Kitni bhi jaanch kara lo, mein fakir hoon, kuchch bhi nahin milega (You may hold as many inquiries against me as you want, but you will find nothing as I am an ascetic).”
