Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Atal Bihari Vajpayee was a Rajya Sabha member who sat on the Parliamentary Committee on the Demand for Punjabi Suba in 1965 and 1966, and who refused to be a party to its report. Wikipedia, used here because no better source for his career opened, says he was born on 25 December 1924 at Gwalior and died on 16 August 2018 in New Delhi. It says he was a founding member of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which he led as national president from 1968 to 1972, and was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1962 and 1986 and ten times to the Lok Sabha. It says he was Minister of External Affairs from 1977 to 1979, helped found the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980 and was its first president, and was Prime Minister in 1996, from 1998 to 1999 and from 1999 to 2004.

The Committee's report lists him among its seven Rajya Sabha members, under its chairman Sardar Hukam Singh. His note, dated 17 March 1966, fills pages 40 to 44 of the report. In it he wrote that he could not be party to a report which, on the Committee's own admission, had failed to find the "cooperative solution" the Home Minister had asked for, and that the Committee had not even explored one.

What his note argued

• The Committee's make-up had aroused misgivings in a large section of Punjab's people. The Punjab Jana Sangh, the Punjab Hindu Sabha, the Punjab Sanatan Dharma Pratinidhi Sabha, certain members of the Punjab High Court Bar, the Punjab Depressed Classes League and the Punjab Ekta Samiti declined to appear before it. The Akali Dal, both the Fateh Singh and Tara Singh groups, also decided not to appear, "for entirely different reasons".
• The objections of the States Reorganisation Commission to a Punjabi-speaking state had as much force in 1966 as in 1956. He wrote that every important committee had acknowledged that the demand was basically communal in motive, and quoted Nehru in the Lok Sabha on 28 August 1961. The Committee's majority took the opposite view: his note itself quotes its finding that the bulk of the evidence refuted that argument.
• Dividing the state would weaken the border and an economy resting on the Bhakra Nangal system, and a separate Haryana would not cure that region's backwardness.
• The mere suggestion of change had already plunged the state into a turmoil like none since 1947, and he asked that an effort be made to reach a cooperative solution.

The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism lists him on the Committee as a member from the Jana Sangh, says the report was made public on 18 March 1966, and says Indira Gandhi conceded the demand on 23 April 1966 and the Punjabi-speaking state became a reality on 1 November 1966. Later, The Tribune says, Parkash Singh Badal's close ties with Vajpayee strengthened the alliance that won the 1997 election.