Senior Congress leader and a close aide to former premier Indira Gandhi, R K Dhawan, passed away in the national capital on Monday night. He was 81 and was ailing for a long time. His health had deteriorated recently.
Dhawan was a member of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) until last month, after which he was dropped due to health issues. He had also been a two-term Rajya Sabha member. The senior leader hemmed the post of Congress general secretary from 1996 to 1999 and then in 2003-04.
Considered to be the closest aide to Indira Gandhi, he remained with her till she was assassinated on October 31, 1984. Co-incidentally, Dhawan had accompanied Mrs Gandhi for an interview to British playwright and actor Peter Ustinov, during which she was shot down by two of her bodyguards.
The commission report led retired Supreme Court judge MP Thakkar, to investigate Indira Gandhi’s assassination, said that Dhawan reappointed Beant Singh and Satwant Singh after they were removed from her security. But Congress rejected the charges and he held key positions in the party and the government.
Dhawan remained to be a part of Indira Gandhi’s close circle in the emergency period and also served a jail-term along with Mrs Gandhi in 1977 during the Janata Party government. Dhawan once described that four years of Thakkar commission investigation was the ‘darkest period’ and wished to have been killed with former PM.
Other than Indira Gandhi, Dhawan also served as a minister of state (independent charge) for urban development from September 1995 to February 1996 in the PV Narasimha Rao government. May his soul rest in peace.
Image Courtesy: Indian Express