Jagjivan Ram

Jagjivan Ram (5 April 1908 – 6 July 1986), popularly known as Babuji, was an Indian independence activist and politician who served as a minister with various portfolios for over 30 years, making him the longest-serving Union Cabinet minister in Indian history. He also served as the Deputy Prime Minister of India from January to July 1979. He played a pivotal role as the Defence Minister of India during the Indo-Pak War of 1971. As Union Agriculture Minister during two separate tenures, he contributed significantly to the Green Revolution and the modernization of Indian agriculture, particularly during the 1974 drought when he was entrusted with addressing a severe food crisis. He was instrumental in the foundation of the All India Depressed Classes League, an organisation dedicated to attaining equality for Dalits, in 1935 and was elected to Bihar Legislative Assembly in 1937, after which he organised the rural labour movement. In 1946, he became the youngest minister in Jawaharlal Nehru's interim government, the first cabinet of India as a Labour Minister and also a member of the Constituent Assembly of India, where he ensured that social justice was enshrined in the Constitution. He went on to serve as a minister with various portfolios till 1979 as a member of the Indian National Congress (INC). Though he opposed Prime Minister Indira Gandhi during the Emergency (1975–77), he left Congress in 1977 and joined the Janata Party alliance, along with his Congress for Democracy and later served as the Deputy Prime Minister of India (1977–79); then in 1981, he formed Congress (J). At his death, he was the last surviving minister of the Interim Government and the last surviving original member of the first cabinet of independent India.