D.C. Pavate

Dadappa Chintappa Pavate, known as D.C. Pavate, was an educationist from Karnataka who served as Governor of Punjab from 1967 to 1973, the years of the first non-Congress ministries and of repeated President's Rule. He wrote an account of the period, My Days as Governor.

Wikipedia says he was born on 2 August 1899 at Mamdapur near Gokak in the Bombay Presidency, took first place in mathematics at Rajaram College, Kolhapur, and went to Cambridge, where he became a wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos. He was Vice-Chancellor of Karnatak University from 1954 to 1967 and received the Padma Bhushan in 1967. Wikipedia gives two different death dates for him, 14 January 1978 and 31 January 1979, so we do not state one.

Wikipedia's list of the governors of Punjab gives his term in the state as 16 October 1967 to 21 May 1973. In those years Gurnam Singh, Lachhman Singh Gill, Gurnam Singh again, Parkash Singh Badal and Giani Zail Singh headed the state's governments, and Punjab twice came under President's Rule.

Key moments

• 16 October 1967: becomes Governor of Punjab.
• 23 August 1968 to 17 February 1969: Khushwant Singh writes that for five and a half months Governor Pavate ruled the State with the help of two advisers, after Lachhman Singh Gill's ministry fell. Khushwant Singh gives 13 August for the start of this spell, though he gives 23 August for the end of Gill's term; Grewal and Wikipedia's table of President's Rule give 23 August, the date used here. A mid-term poll in February 1969 followed.
• 13 June 1971: Khushwant Singh writes that Parkash Singh Badal resigned and Punjab came under President's Rule, with the Governor and his advisers proceeding to restore normalcy. Wikipedia's list has Pavate in office until May 1973.

What he is remembered for. He is remembered as the Governor of Punjab through the years of Akali coalitions and defections that Khushwant Singh describes as a game of defections and regroupings. Khushwant Singh's footnotes cite Pavate's memoir (pp. 138 and 139) in his account of the ministries of Gurnam Singh and Badal.