Balram Jakhar

Balram Jakhar (1923 to 2016) was a Congress politician from the Abohar area of Punjab. He was Speaker of the Lok Sabha from 1980 to 1989, the longest tenure of any Speaker (Wikipedia), which means he held the chair through Operation Blue Star in June 1984 and the November 1984 Ghallughara in Delhi. He is in this record for that reason. None of the sources we could open records a ruling or statement by him on those events, and none is attributed to him here.

Key moments

• Born 23 August 1923 at Panjkosi, in the Fazilka area, into a Hindu Jat family. He took a Sanskrit degree at Forman Christian College, Lahore, in 1945 (Wikipedia).
• 1972 and 1977: elected to the Punjab Assembly from Abohar, and Leader of the Opposition there from June 1977 to February 1980 (Wikipedia).
• 1980 to 1989: Speaker of the Lok Sabha, elected first from Ferozepur and, from 1984, from Sikar in Rajasthan. The Tribune credits him with computerising parliamentary work and helping set up the Parliament Museum. ThePrint calls him an Indira Gandhi loyalist.
• 1991 to 1996: Union Minister of Agriculture under P V Narasimha Rao (The Tribune).
• 30 June 2004 to 30 May 2009: Governor of Madhya Pradesh (The Tribune).
• 3 February 2016: he died at his home in New Delhi, aged 92, a year after a stroke. His cremation was to be held at Panjkosi near Abohar (The Tribune).

Family: ThePrint names his sons as Sajjan Kumar Jakhar, a minister under Beant Singh, Surinder Jakhar, chairman of IFFCO, who died in 2011, and Sunil Jakhar, a former Punjab Congress president who later joined the BJP.

A claim held back: it is claimed that Bangladesh closed entry to Sikh citizens of India after November 1984 and that Speaker Balram Jakhar called the matter Bangladesh's internal affair. No published outside source for either claim has been found, so this site holds that event as unverified and this profile does not repeat it as fact.

Remembered for: his long Speakership, his farm-sector work, and a political family that kept a place in Punjab and national politics across the Congress and the BJP.