NEW DELHI: Former Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satyapal Malik, who was also the governor of Goa, Bihar, Odisha and Meghalaya died in the ICU centre of the government’s Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital here on August 5 after battling for life for nearly two months. He was 79.
The CBI raid on his house still continues while he had told friends that the agency would not find anything in his one-room house having six sets of Kurta-payjama.
Born in a Jat farmer family of Hisavada village in Meerut district, he was a born socialist and led many socialist movements and never hesitated from speaking out in support of the farmers even as the governor. He had joined the BJP but he tells friends that it was his mistake.
He was inducted in the Bhartiya Krani dal by Deputy Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh. He was a member of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha and also a union minister. As the J&K governor, he told Prime Minister Modi how a RSS leader tried to bribe him with Rs 200 crore. It goes to credit of Malik that he exposed the role of the government in the Pulwama incident, attracting the ire of the government.
Even while being the governor and being a BJP member, he always raised his voice against the Modi government, asserting that he is first a farmer and then anything else.
