George Mathew Fernandes, a former Union Defence Minister in the Vajpayee government who was elected nine times to the Lok Sabha, died on Tuesday in New Delhi. He was 88.

Fernandes, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, had swine flu for the last few days.

A veteran parliamentarian who was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1967, George Fernandes served several times as a Union Cabinet Minister, holding portfolios such as communications, industry, and railways, besides defence.

Arrested during the Emergency, George Fernandes was the industries minister in the first non-Congress government that came to power after the Janata Party defeated Indira Gandhi — whom Fernandes once called a “congenital liar”.

President Ram Nath Kovind said today that George Fernandes was “champion of democracy, during the Emergency and beyond”.

“A shrewd operator with more political jives than an alley cat.”
– India Today magazine report on George Fernandes, June 1979
George Fernandes and others were charged with smuggling dynamite in an alleged plot to blow up railway tracks and government buildings in the Baroda Dynamite Case. He was still in prison when he won in Muzaffarpur in the 1977 general election.

In 1979 an India Today magazine described the “tempestuous and highly contradictory transitions in his chequered career” like this — “from novice priest to socialist firebrand, trade union leader to the most wanted man on the run, and, now, a reluctant senior cabinet minister”.

George Fernandes was born in Mangaluru in British India, on June 3, 1930.

“When we think of Mr George Fernandes, we remember most notably the fiery trade union leader who fought for justice, the leader who could humble the mightiest of politicians at the hustings, a visionary Railway Minister and a great Defence Minister who made India safe and strong,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said.

“He epitomised simple living and high thinking,” President Ram Nath Kovind said.

“We will all miss him.”