The Yashpal Kapur story, his legacy in Rae Bareli and how today’s generation hardly remembers him

He was in his early 20s when Ram Sewak Chaudhary travelled for the first time outside his hamlet of Rae Bareli. It was the late 1960s, and Chaudhary was in Delhi with his friends.

- Qazi Faraz Ahmad

The group was walking past the PM's then residence on Safdarjung Road when they noticed a clot of farmers waiting to meet then PM Indira Gandhi. Intrigued, they too joined the queue and were ushered into a big hall where Gandhi spent a few minutes with the whole group. Upon learning that the young men were from Rae Bareli, her family pocket borough, she called for her aide from the region, a man in his 40s.

That was the first time Chaudhary met Yashpal Kapur, then Gandhi's private secretary. “It seemed Kapur was among the most powerful men in that room,” said Chaudhary, sitting in a small two-room house in ITI colony of Rae Bareli.

Now 78, Chaudhary remembered Kapur coming down to Rae Bareli in 1970, talking to local Congress leaders for the upcoming 1971 elections, spending nights at the local party office and beginning the canvassing process for Indira Gandhi. “His contacts were a niche set of Congress leaders,” said Chaudhary.

“Kapur was the eyes and ears of Indira ji,” said Shiv Manohar Pandey, a local expert.

That would prove to be a turning point in Indian democracy. Four years after she won the Rae Bareli parliamentary election by 110,000 votes, Indira Gandhi's victory was voided by a momentous Allahabad high court judgment that precipitated the Emergency. HT looks back at the life and work of the man who was at the centre of this crisis.

Kapur was born in Rawalpindi in 1929 and finished his schooling in the erstwhile undivided India.

He joined the external affairs ministry as a stenographer in 1954-55. “Pandit ji then retained my father as an assistant private secretary. His role continued till 1960. Then my father was attached with Indira ji; in 1962, when Indira ji contested elections, my father looked after her administrative office. Over a period of time, my father became an officer-on-special duty,” said his son Ashok Kapur, a Delhi-based businessman.