Intellectual, witty, wordsmith, outstanding parliamentarian and gentleman politician. This is how colleagues remembered S. Jaipal Reddy, who had been elected to the Lok Sabha five times, the Rajya Sabha twice and the Assembly of undivided Andhra Pradesh four times.
In his tribute, President Ram Nath Kovind described him as a “thinking man’s politician”. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called him “a friend who was a treasure of wisdom and knowledge”.
Knowledge, coupled with humour, made Mr. Reddy a natural choice to be the spokesperson of the party he represented or the government he was part of — someone who could quote George Bernard Shaw if he wanted to avoid a direct answer or give the “perfect background briefing” for journalists.
It was this ability that made him the spokesperson for the National Front and the United Front governments and the voice of the Janta Dal, especially when it was faced with a leadership crisis because of factional feuds.
In the late 1990s, he was made the Information and Broadcasting Minister in the United Front government when it was led by the late I.K. Gujral.
He started out as a student leader of Osmania University and became a Congress MLA in the 1970s. Later, when former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency in 1975, he quit the Congress in protest and joined the Janata Party and contested against her in Medak in 1980.
He lost the election but he had proved himself to be a politician who was ready to fight for the right causes, someone who never allowed his physical disability to come in the way of his conviction.
In 1984, when the Congress had swept the Lok Sabha election, he was a key voice of the Opposition in the lower House of Parliament, as the general secretary of the Janata Party (that later split and becamethe Janata Dal).
His oratorical skills in Parliament earned him the Best Parliamentarian Award in 1998. A year later, he rejoined the Congress following the failure of various coalitions that had come together on the glue of anti-Congressism. “When he became spokesman of the Congress, I congratulated him and he told me he was spokesman of two political formations that ceased to exist: Janata Dal and National Front. I told him that I hope the third time he will be lucky,” Jairam Ramesh of the Congress told The Hindu .
“Behind every word that he spoke or wrote, there was deep scholarship and a passion that was remarkable,” said former Union Minister P. Chidambaram.
During the 10-year rule of the United Progressive Alliance, Mr. Reddy headed various Ministries — from Information and Broadcasting to Urban Development and Science and Technology — but it was his removal from the Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry that triggered a political storm. It was alleged that he was moved out after he imposed a hefty fine on an oil firm that defaulted on its commitments on gas production from the Krishna-Godavari basin.
