Dehradun: Four days back Rohit Shekhar,39, the biological son of late senior Congress leader ND Tiwari expressed his willingness to rejoin Congress after he couldn’t get his “due” in BJP. But before he could take next step, he died in his home in New Delhi on Tuesday.
Desperate to make a mark in politics, apparently riding on his father’s political legacy, Rohit joined BJP in the run up to the Uttarakhand assembly polls in 2017. He, however, couldn’t get a chance to contest polls. Since the demise of ND Tiwari in October last year, Rohit has been looking for a fresh ‘head start’.
It was somewhere around 2004, a young man Rohit in his late 20s turned red-faced when then chief minister of Uttarakhand ND Tiwari refused to meet him at his official residence in Dehradun. Rohit asserted he was the son of the veteran Congress leader, a claim that none was willing to accept. But he didn’t give up and filed litigation in a Delhi court in 2008 seeking DNA test of Tiwari. Four years later, the DNA report confirmed ND Tiwari was his father and this is how senior Tiwari publicly accepted his ‘biological’ son and married his mother Ujjwala.
“It was a long battle for me and my mother (Ujjawala) but I am happy we won and finally (senior Tiwariji) pitaji has accepted me” Rohit had said soon after ND Tiwari adopted him in 2012. In his changed avatar, he donned Gandhian cap, a favourite dress gear of his father. He would make frequent visit to Nainital with his father in a bid to connect with the voters who were connected with ND Tiwari.
Senior Tiwari remained a big name in Congress circles. A veteran leader who held several positions in the union cabinet during the Congress regime and was also sworn in for four times as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, Tiwari accepting Rohit as his son meant a lot for the young man.
When senior Tiwari was feeling alienated, it was Mulayam Singh who invited the Tiwari’s to settle in UP. It was not all. Nevertheless, Rohit was appointed in a corporation and was given a ministerial level position in the Akhilesh Yadav government. He wanted to contest parliamentary polls from Nainital in 2014 on Samajwadi Party ticket but was not considered.
Months before the death of his father, Rohit tied the nuptial knot with a girl who hails from a political family.
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