Satyapal Malik’s political journey: From loyalist to controversial critic

Veteran politician Satyapal Malik’s five-decade-long political career spanned across multiple political parties and included several high-profile gubernatorial appointments before he transitioned into an outspoken critic of the very establishment he had served.

He served as the governor of four states — Bihar (2017), Jammu and Kashmir (2018), Goa (2019), and Meghalaya (2020). But his most impactful assignment commenced in August 2018, when he was named the governor of Jammu and Kashmir.

The tenure saw two significant events — the 2019 Pulwama attack, in which 40 CRPF personnel lost their lives, and the August 5, 2019 revocation of Article 370 and the division of the erstwhile state into two Union Territories — Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. Malik was the last governor of the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Malik, 79, who had been hospitalised for some time, passed away in a Delhi hospital on Tuesday, which marks the sixth anniversary of Article 370 revocation.

Though he rose to prominence as a loyalist in BJP, his recent years have been characterised by his vociferous condemnation of the central government’s policies, reworking his public image from that of a seasoned administrator to that of a vocal dissident.

From Jammu and Kashmir, he had been relocated to Goa, where his relationship with the state government soured as he was openly critical of its Covid response and accused it of corruption. His term in Goa came to an abrupt halt and he was posted to Meghalaya, his final assignment.

On retirement from governorship, he publicly confronted the central government over crucial matters, which included a contention that the Pulwama attack was an outcome of governmental indifference, and vocally backed the farmers’ protests against the three central laws, contending that the government had not listened to them.

During his last days of life, Malik was also named in the CBI chargesheets filed in May this year in connection with the alleged corruption in the Rs 2,200 crore Kiru Hydro power project. He strongly refuted the charges from his hospital bed, calling it “political vendetta”.

Malik was born on July 24, 1946, in the Baghpat district of Uttar Pradesh.

His political journey started as a student leader with socialist ideology but his career was later characterised by party hopping as he switched from the Bharatiya Kranti Dal (BKD) to the Congress, then the Janata Dal and finally BJP.

The Jat leader was first elected to the Uttar Pradesh Assembly in 1974 on Charan Singh’s BKD party.

Malik was elected twice to the Rajya Sabha — from 1980 to 1986 and then from 1986 to 1989 — before he decided to contest the Lok Sabha elections on the Janata Dal ticket. He won from the Aligarh parliamentary seat.

The then VP Singh government appointed him as the Union Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs and Tourism.

After the fall of the VP Singh government and the subsequent turmoil in the Janata Dal, Malik switched to BJP, where he became a party vice-president and also acted as in-charge of its Kisan Morcha (farmers’ cell).