BBC World Service, May 10 1964
"We have just received news from Delhi, Prime Minister Nehru is dead. Repeat, Indian Prime Minister Jawarhalal Nehru is dead of a stroke. Home Minister I.K. Gujarat has been sworn in as acting Prime Minister..."
"When the news came, it was shocking. Never in our wildest imagination did we believe this could that my father would have approved. The MP's thought differently..."
The Congressional Life, Indira Gandhi, 1988
"By a vote of 300 to 224, Morarji Desai has defeated Lal Bahadur Shastri for the Congress leadership, and hence the Prime Ministership. He will be sworn in within the week..."
May 18 1964- "I, Morarji Desai, do solemnly swear to faithfully execute the office of Prime Minister of India..."
One of the new Prime Minister's first actions was to appoint his proteges, including A.B. Vajpayee, to the Planning Commission. The plan was to transform the Commission into the Economic Advisory Council, for the Prime Minister felt that the federal-state balance had been vastly tilted in favour of the Centre. "We will hear no more of Delhi dictatorship, political or otherwise, but rather we shall be the designers and the state Chief Ministers the engineers of national policy." After the next federal election, he would engineer a compromise of the use of English, due to expire in 1967 after twenty years, and start privatization en masse. Desai's conservative, "Blue Tory" leanings were well known and disliked intensely by his predecessor and Nehru's entourage, including Indira Gandhi.
"Government orders twenty 707's and 727's for Air India"- Times of India, July 19, 1964
"Need for close US-India relationship" says Desai- New York Times, Oct. 15, 1964
As 1965 began, Kashmir began to flare up again, though many were unaware...
GEN AYUB KHAN ASSN'D IN KASHMIR, ELECTION STATUS UNKNOWN...