Urmila Singh
Urmila Singh was an Indian politician who served as the Governor of Himachal Pradesh from 25 January 2010 to 28 January 2015.
Early life
Urmila Singh was born in Phingeshwar village in Raipur district, now located in Chhattisgarh state, into a land owning Adivasi family of central India, which also produced freedom fighters and social reformers. Urmila's great-grandfather, Raja Natwar Singh of Haridaypur, was a freedom fighter, who was executed by the British rulers. Some other family members were deported to serve sentences in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.Urmila Singh was married at a young age to Virendra Bahadur Singh, Raja of Seraipally princely state in Chhattisgarh. The couple became the parents of one daughter and two sons and Urmila Singh devoted herself to the nurture of her family. Virendra Bahadur Singh became a prominent Congress party political and a member of the Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly, elected from the areas that his family had previously ruled for several centuries. His mother, Rani Shyam Kumari Devi, was a Member of Parliament.
Political career
In Madhya Pradesh
After the sudden early death of her husband, Urmila Singh stepped into the political arena to contest the assembly seat previously held by him. She was duly elected for several consecutive terms from the family borough to the Madhya Pradesh assembly and remained a member from 1985 to 2003.She served as a Minister of State for Dairy Development and as Cabinet Minister for Social Welfare and Tribal Welfare. She also served as President of the MP Congress between 1996 and 1998.
In Chhattisgarh
The new state of Chhattisgarh was carved out of Madhya Pradesh in 2000, and Urmila's constituency now fell to the portion of the new state. Urmila Singh was therefore automatically a member of the first ever legislative assembly of Chhattisgarh between 2000 and 2003. The Congress party suffered a rout in both states in the 2003 assembly elections and Urmila Singh was one of the casualties.She lost the elections in 2008 also.