Margaret Alva is selected by 17 opposition parties as a common candidate for the post of Vice-President. Apparently, the election is to be held on August 6. She is going to contest against West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankar, the candidate from the NDA’s side. Both of them are lawyers. According to Wikipedia and India Today, her biography says so much about her.
Birth and Education
Alva was born on April 14, 1942 in Mangalore. To a Manglorean christian family. She graduated from Mount Carmel College, Bengaluru. Later, later she pursued a law degree from the Government Law College, Bengaluru. In 1964.
Marriage and Family
She married Niranjan Thomas Alva, a lawyer-turned-businessman. Joachim Alva served as a Congress MP for three terms (15 years, 1952 to 1967).
Niranjan Alva died in 2018 due to illness. The couple has three sons Niret, Nikhil and Nivedith and a daughter Manira.
Political career
Margaret Alva joined politics and became a close confidant of Indira Gandhi at the time. She was only 32 years when she was first elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1974.However, she continued her legacy to the upper house of Parliament in 1980, 1986 and 1992 . She was a member of the Rajya Sabha till 1997. For 23 years at a stretch she was an MP. Right from her initial days of her political career. She is known to be close to the Gandhi family, starting with Indira Gandhi.
Furthermore, at an early age of 42, Indira Gandhi chose her as the minister of state for parliamentary affairs in 1984. However, she was continued in the same portfolio during the term of prime ministers Rajiv Gandhi and P.V. Narasimha Rao.
Apart from that she also held additional responsibility of minister of state for youth and sports and women and child development. Rajiv Gandhi selected her for this post to her. Later on she was made the minister of state for personnel, public grievances and pensions, by PV Narasimha Rao.
In 1999, Margaret Alva was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Uttara Kannada constituency in Karnataka. She served as general secretary of the All-India Congress Committee between 2004-2009. Alva was given the responsibility to be the coordinator in Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s office for two years. Moreover, she was the national convenor of the women’s wing of the Congress.
Backfired her political career
Alva publicly accused Congress party’s Karnataka unit of “selling tickets” to the highest bidder, in 2008. Her son, Nivedith, was denied a seat to contest the assembly elections. Hence, she bursted out and this cost her too much for her career.
She was not only denied a ministerial position in the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government but her organisational responsibilities were snatched from her.
Later, she was dropped as AICC general secretary and from the party’s election committee as well.
In her autobiography, Courage & Commitment, published in 2017, Alva blamed senior Congress leaders and also spoke about the frosty relationship between Sonia Gandhi and Narasimha Rao.
As a Governor
She always fought back from any kind off situation . Alva became the first female governor of Uttarakhand after her resignation from the Congress in 2008. She continued in the same position till May 2012 . Later she was appointed as governor of Rajasthan. Moreover, served as the governor of Goa and Gujarat for a brief period in 2014.
Attitude to fight back
If the outburst in 2008 broke her decades-long ties with the Congress party, her autobiography in 2017 also reportedly made the Gandhi family unhappy. But on every occasion, Alva always made a successful comeback.
In 2009, she was chosen for a gubernatorial assignment while in 2018—one year after her controversial book—her son Nikhil found place in the core team of then Congress president Rahul Gandhi.
Recently, Alva wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, expressing her angst over a move by the BJP government in the state to bring in a law on religious conversions. She is all set to return to the limelight as the Opposition’s candidate for the vice-president’s post.
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