Siddhartha Shankar Ray : wiki | Biography | wikipedia

siddhartha shankar ray : wiki | biography | wikipedia

Siddhartha shankar ray (bengali: সিদ্ধার্থশঙ্কর রায়) (1920–6 november 2010) was an indian politician belonging to the indian national congress. He was a huge barrister, punjab governor and education minister of india. He was also the ambassador of india to the united states of america and served as the chief minister of west bengal from 1972 to 1977.

background and education

Ray’s father, sudhir kumar ray, was a well known barrister of calcutta high court and mother aparna devi, was the oldest daughter of the nationalist leader ‘deshbandhu’ chittaranjan das and basanti devi. His younger sister is justice manjula bose, one of the initial two women judges of the calcutta high court. Ray is married to maya ray, who grew up in england, and has been denoted to as “a noted barrister and previous elected official” by thomas j. Manton, a member of the united states house of representatives.

Ray was educated at presidency college, calcutta, and then was called to the bar in england. While in college, he was captain the presidency college cricket team.

career

Ray started his career as a barrister in the calcutta high court. Later, helped by ashoke kumar sen, he started his political career as a cabinet minister in bidhan chandra ray’s cabinet in west bengal. Later, through the 1960s he steeply rose in all indian level politics in delhi to became union cabinet minister of education & youth services of the government of india.

After the congress won the general election of 1972, he became the chief minister of west bengal from march 19, 1972 to june 21, 1977. He took office shortly after the bangladesh liberation war, and his administration was faced with the massive problem of resettling over a million refugees in respective constituents of the state. The civic services of calcutta in peculiar found rehabilitation of the bangladeshi refugees to be an uphill task, but the state government, underneath ray’s guidance, performed this task with much credit.

Later, he had the distinction of serving as the governor of punjab from april 2, 1986 to december 8, 1989. When the congress came back to power once again in delhi in 1991, ray was sent as india’s ambassador to the united states. He remained in the usa from 1992 to 1996. His tenure in washington was widely considered to be very successful.

Ray died on november 6, 2010 at the age of 90.

Posted by musicking on Nov 6 2010. Filed under Breaking News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry