As tributes pour in for former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh following his death on Thursday (December 26), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Asim Arun has shared an anecdote from the time he was in office.
Arun is a Member of Legislative Assembly for the BJP from Uttar Pradesh’s Kannauj constituency. He is a Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Social Welfare in the Government of Uttar Pradesh. Before joining politics, he was an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer and served in the Special Protection Group (SPG), the dedicated government agency mandated with the security of the Prime Minister of India.
In a post on X, Arun wrote that he served in the team managing the inner-most cordon of the SPG engaged in the prime minister’s security, which is called ‘Close Protection Team’ (CPT). As the AIG of CPT, he said he was the constant shadow of Singh for three years.
Arun wrote, “Starting in 2004, I was his bodyguard for nearly three years. The innermost cordon of the SPG in prime minister’s security is managed by Close Protection Team (CPT). I had the chance to lead that team. The AIG of CPT is someone who could never be far from the PM. If there is a situation in which only one bodyguard could be with the PM, then that would one bodyguard would be this person. It was my duty to be his shadow all the time,” said Arun in a post in Hindi.
Arun went to write that Singh’s only personal vehicle was Maruti 800 that used his parked behind his official BMW car. He said that Singh often expressed the desire to drive around in his personal car instead of BMW because that was the car he felt connected to as someone who came from the middle class and thought often about the commoners.
Arun wrote, “Dr Sahab had only one car of his own — a Maruti 800. The car would be parked behind the sparking BMW at the Prime Minister’s Residence. Manmohan Ji used of often tell me, ‘Asim, I don’t like to drive around in this car [BMW]. This [Maruti 800] is my car.’ I used to tell him that the BMW is not for his personal glory but has been picked by the SPG for its security features. However, every time the cavalcade would drive by the Maruti, he used to look at his car longingly as he was repeating his pledge in his head: ‘I am a middle-class person and it is my job to think about the concerns of commoners. This car worth crores is of the PM. My car is Maruti.’”
Singh died on Thursday evening at the age of 92. He served as the Prime Minister of India during 2004-14 and led the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance UPA) government. Previously, he had served as an MP for decades and his best-known previous portfolio was the Finance Minister in the PV Narasimha Rao Ministry (1991-96) in which he presided over India’s economic reforms.
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