Babu Jagjivan Ram 113th birth anniversary.:
The Prime Minister paid tributes to freedom fighters and former Deputy Prime Minister Babu Jagjivan Ram on his 113th birth anniversary.
- Jagjivan Ram, popularly known as Babuji, was a national leader, a freedom fighter, a crusader of social justice, a champion of depressed classes, and an outstanding Parliamentarian.
- Jagjivan Ram was born on 5th April 1908 in Chandwa in Bihar to a Dalit family.
- In 1931, he became a member of the Indian National Congress (Congress Party).
- He was instrumental in the foundation of the All India Depressed Classes League, an organisation dedicated to attaining equality for untouchables, in 1934-35.
- He was a champion of social equality and equal rights for the Depressed Classes.
- In 1935, he proposed at a session of the Hindu Mahasabha that drinking water wells and temples be open to untouchables.
- In 1935, Babuji also appeared before the Hammond Commission at Ranchi and demanded, for the first time, voting rights for the Dalits.
- He was jailed twice in the early 1940s for his political activities associated with the Quit India movement against British rule.
- When Jawaharlal Nehru formed the provisional government, Jagjivan Ram became its youngest minister.
- After independence he held the labour portfolio until 1952. Thereafter he served in Nehru’s cabinet in the posts of minister for communications (1952–56), transport and railways (1956–62), and transport and communications (1962–63).
- He served as minister for food and agriculture (1967–70), and in 1970 he was made minister of defense.
- The Indo-Pakistan War of 1971 was fought when he was the defense minister.
- He left Congress in 1977 and joined the Janata Party alliance, along with his Congress for Democracy (new party). He later served as the Deputy Prime Minister of India (1977–79).
- Jagjivan Ram was a member of the Parliament uninterrupted from 1936 to 1986 (40 years) and this is a world record.
- He also holds another record for being the longest-serving cabinet minister in India (30 years).
