The Yashpal Kapur story, his legacy in Raebareli and how today's generation hardly remembers him

Hindustan Times

16-07-2025

[e-mail] Yashpal Kapur with former PM Indira Gandhi (Picture provided by Kapur's son Ashok Kapur)
He was in his early 20s when Ram Sewak Chaudhary travelled for the first time outside his hamlet of Rae Bareli. It was the late 1960s, and Chaudhary was in Delhi with his friends. The group was walking past the PM's then residence on Safdarjung Road when they noticed a clot of farmers waiting to meet then PM Indira Gandhi. Intrigued, they too joined the queue and were ushered into a big hall where Gandhi spent a few minutes with the whole group. Upon learning that the young men were from Rae Bareli, her family pocket borough, she called for her aide from the region, a man in his 40s.
That was the first time Chaudhary met Yashpal Kapur, then Gandhi's private secretary. 'It seemed Kapur was among the most powerful men in that room,' said Chaudhary, sitting in a small two-room house in ITI colony of Rae Bareli.
Now 78, Chaudhary remembered Kapur coming down to Rae Bareli in 1970, talking to local Congress leaders for the upcoming 1971 elections, spending nights at the local party office and beginning the canvassing process for Indira Gandhi. 'His contacts were a niche set of Congress leaders,' said Chaudhary. 'Kapur was the eyes and ears of Indira ji,' said Shiv Manohar Pandey, a local expert.
That would prove to be a turning point in Indian democracy. Four years after she won the Rae Bareli parliamentary election by 110,000 votes, Indira Gandhi's victory was voided by a momentous Allahabad high court judgment that precipitated the Emergency. HT looks back at the life and work of the man who was at the centre of this crisis.
Kapur was born in Rawalpindi in 1929 and finished his schooling in the erstwhile undivided India. He joined the external affairs ministry as a stenographer in 1954-55. 'Pandit ji then retained my father as an assistant private secretary. His role continued till 1960. Then my father was attached with Indira ji; in 1962, when Indira ji contested elections, my father looked after her administrative office. Over a period of time, my father became an officer-on-special duty,' said his son Ashok Kapur, a Delhi-based businessman.
As the 1971 elections approached, Kapur left the secretariat to become Indira Gandhi's election agent for Rae Bareli. For his services, he was rewarded with a Rajya Sabha seat from Uttar Pradesh in 1972, and he served in the Upper House till 1978.
But his role during the 1971 election campaign came under the scanner when Indira Gandhi's then vanquished opponent, Raj Narain, filed a petition in the high court, accusing the then PM of corrupt practices. Justice Jagmohanlal Sinha threw out most of the charges, but found two credible – one that Kapur and other officials such as the then district magistrate arranged rostrums, loudspeakers, barricades and police posting during an election tour; and that Indira Gandhi used the service of a gazetted officer, as Kapur was before he resigned, to make election speeches.
The case hinged on the date Kapur resigned. He submitted his resignation from the post of officer on special duty on January 13, 1971 and a notification was issued on January 25, 1971. He was appointed Indira Gandhi's election agent on February 4, 1971. But the high court found that Kapur delivered election speeches on January 7, 1971 and January 19, 1971 – before his resignation was officially accepted. This, the judgment held, put Indira Gandhi afoul of the Representation of the People Act, a contention later upheld by the Supreme Court on June 24, 1975. The next day, Emergency was imposed.
Roughly 100km from Lucknow is the hamlet of Rae Bareli, with old connections to both Motilal and Jawaharlal Nehru since the days of a farmer agitation in the early 1920s. Rae Bareli — then a combination of Pratapgarh(West) and Rae Bareli(East) – was picked as the seat for Feroze Gandhi, Indira Gandhi's husband and the prime minister's son-in-law. He won that election, and then again in 1957. Indira Gandhi took over the seat in 1967.
Today, it is a large hamlet of 1.6 million people. It still remains a bastion of the Gandhi family and is currently represented by the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi.
'There was a house of one Raghvendra Shukla from Bachrawan, which was vacant, that was made as the office of Indira ji. All the publicity material was kept there. That place was called the central office and Kapur used to stay at that place whenever he was here,' said Chaudhary.
Here, older people still talk about the iconic (and later infamous) photo of Indira Gandhi campaigning on a jeep with Kapur. Chaudhary said the jeeps were washed and cleaned and sent back to Delhi after the elections. 'The jeep in which Indira ji campaigned along with Kapur was taken by the Congress. Hundreds of cars used to come to Rae Bareli from Delhi,' he said.
When the Morarji Desai government swept to power in 1977, Kapur was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Kapur, along with other Gandhi aides such as RK Dhawan and PC Sethi, were arrested on charges that the Congress received unaccounted-for funds from private companies. CBI also alleged that the suspects siphoned off ₹6 crore from the Congress.
He was also made the chairman of the National Herald newspaper in 1977, and continued till 1985-86. In 1983, Kapur also managed to get his cousin RK Dhawan into the still fledgling Rajiv Gandhi's team. 'Dhawan was the son of my father's aunt, and he was trained by my father to handle the affairs of the PMO,' said his son, Ashok Kapur.
After Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984, Kapur's hold in the Congress appeared to loosen. 'The bond started to weaken when Rajeev Gandhi took over the reins. Though Kapur kept visiting Rae Bareli till the early 90s, he never had a public connection,' said Pandey.
Ashok Kapur confirmed this. 'Rajiv Gandhi's team members created such circumstances that my father's entry was banned in the PMO. His team ensured that my father couldn't meet Rajiv ji even after he gave an appointment to meet my father,' he said.
In 1991, Kapur fought the parliamentary election from Rae Bareli as a candidate of the Jharkhand Party, finishing fourth. Two years later, he died.
His son Ashok sporadically returned to Rae Bareli, even working once to help Samajwadi Party candidates. His two elder brothers have died, one sister is in Delhi and another in South Africa. 'I am still a voter of Raebareli, I still have an address there,' he said, stressing on the family's deep ties to the area.
But in Raebareli, the ties appear to have frayed. The local Congress unit chief, Pankaj Tiwari, admits that hardly anyone remembers Kapur. At the local tea shop, local resident Om Nath Singh said people take pride in the Gandhi name, but not even the older generation remembers Kapur. And for 25-year-old Akhil Srivastava, the name doesn't even ring a bell. 'He may have been a famous person back then but today no one knows him,' he said.