The Inquiry That Brought Down Punjab CM Partap Singh Kairon

The doctor case was the only one in the first group. A government medical officer, Dr Harcharan Singh Dhillon, had attended Kairon during travel in 1956–57, and the commission looked at how his leave and service records were handled afterwards. It treated the arrangement as using official influence for personal benefit. By today’s standards it looks small, which is partly why the Hindustan Times later used it as a measure of how high the bar for public life once was.

The land deals were the most serious. The commission found that purchases at Ramgarh Dhani and Madhar Kalan went against the spirit and purpose of the land-tenure laws, and were made with Kairon’s full knowledge and consent, if not at his direction. The involvement of close relatives, and the benefit to his son Surinder Singh Kairon, weighed heavily.

Above the individual cases sat the finding that mattered politically: that Kairon had connived at what his family and officials were doing. He knew, or had ample reason to suspect, and did not stop it. The commission called this conduct unbecoming of a Chief Minister, then left the consequences to the government.

Kairon had survived complaints before. The Hindustan Times counts three earlier probes under Nehru, all of which cleared him. The difference in 1963 was the form of the complaint and the response to it. Nehru did not ask Kairon to step aside; in his note of 25 October 1963 he argued that would destabilise Punjab. But he did recommend a statutory inquiry, and on 1 November the Centre appointed one.

The timing then turned against Kairon. The commission’s deadline was pushed from 1 February to 1 June 1964. Nehru died on 27 May. Lal Bahadur Shastri was sworn in as Prime Minister on 9 June, and the report arrived days later. Kairon resigned before the government had even released it.

Most of the cases involved the ordinary machinery of a state government in the 1950s: licences for cinemas, permits and supplies for cold stores and a mill, decisions on transport businesses, and the application of land-ceiling rules. The commission’s question in each was the same: did Kairon’s position bend those decisions in favour of his sons or relatives, and did he know?

The Das Commission was created to find facts and report them. It could not convict, fine or disqualify anyone. Its conclusions about abuse of influence and connivance were grave findings of public accountability, made by a former Chief Justice, but they were not a criminal verdict reached after a prosecution.

Its procedure drew criticism. It decided the case on affidavits and documents, and after hearing both sides’ lawyers ruled that oral evidence and cross-examination were unnecessary. In the Rajya Sabha debate of 21 December 1964, Kairon’s defenders argued that this left the evidence untested. The commission acknowledged that political rivalry formed the background to the complaint, but it did not dismiss the memorandum as motivated; it ruled on each charge separately.

The state’s response came through a review rather than a prosecution. R.S. Krishnaswamy, a former ICS officer, was asked to recommend departmental or criminal action against officials, and to look at non-officials, former ministers and the disputed transactions. By November 1964 officers were being chargesheeted. Kairon himself was never charged; he was killed in February 1965.

The inquiry did not single-handedly transform Punjab. The 1966 reorganisation came from the Punjabi Suba movement and decisions in New Delhi, and Kairon’s murder was a separate crime. Its significance is narrower and clearer: it removed the state’s strongest leader and left a divided party behind.