Political Career
He was elected to the Madras Legislative Assembly in 1946 and became the Secretary of the Madras Congress Legislature Party. In 1947, he became a Member of the Indian Constituent Assembly. He was Minister for Prohibition, Housing and Forests in the composite state of Madras from 1949 to 1951. He was elected as President of the Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee in 1951. In 1952, he was elected as a Member of the Rajya Sabha.
Following the reorganisation of the states along linguistic lines, he served as the first Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh in October 1956 and again from 1962 to 1964. He also served as President of the Congress party from 1959 to 1962. On 9 June 1964, he was appointed a Union Minister of Steel and Mines. He was elected to the Rajya Sabha in November 1964. He was Union Minister of Transport, Civil Aviation, Shipping and Tourism from January 1966 to March 1967 in the Cabinet. He was Elected to the Lok Sabha from Hindupur constituency in Andhra Pradesh.
Following these stints in the Union cabinet, he was elected Speaker of Lok Sabha on 17 March 1967. Reddy became the first Speaker to quit his political party, so that he would be seen to be impartial in presiding over the house. He subsequently won unprecedented acclaim and admiration for his role.
In 1969, following the death of President Zakir Hussain, Reddy was nominated as the official candidate of Congress party; in particular, he was seen as the candidate of the old guard of the Congress. However Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the leader of the breakaway faction from the Congress, knowing that Sanjiva Reddy was too independent a person to toe her line, asked her partymen to "vote according to their conscience", rather than the diktat of the old guard. This implied her support to V. V. Giri, who went on to defeat Sanjiva Reddy and become the fourth President of India. The 1969 Indian presidential election remains the most closely fought in independent India's history.
Subsequently Reddy, who had resigned from the Lok Sabha speakership before the election, retired from active politics. He returned to his native village Illuru to take up his fore-fathers' occupation—farming.
Read more about this topic: Neelam Sanjiva Reddy
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