Jagjivan Ram: India’s Longest-Serving Cabinet Minister — MCQs with Answers (Set 1)

Jagjivan Ram’s daughter, Meira Kumar, later became the first woman Speaker of the Lok Sabha.

Jagjivan Ram’s Defence Ministry oversaw the surrender of about 93,000 Pakistani soldiers, at the end of the 1971 war.

As Labour Minister, Jagjivan Ram helped lay the foundation of India’s social security laws, including the Minimum Wages Act.

Jagjivan Ram earned his BSc from the University of Calcutta in 1931, after earlier studying at Banaras Hindu University.

After leaving the Congress in 1977, Jagjivan Ram formed the Congress for Democracy on 2 February 1977, which later merged into the Janata alliance for that year’s election.

He led India’s Defence Ministry through the 1971 war, which ended with the surrender of about 93,000 Pakistani soldiers and Bangladesh’s liberation.

He founded the All India Depressed Classes League in 1935, working for equality for untouchables.

Jagjivan Ram served as a Union Cabinet minister for over 30 years, the longest tenure in Indian history.

He was Defence Minister from 1977, but only became Deputy Prime Minister on 24 January 1979, holding the post until 28 July 1979.

Jagjivan Ram became the cabinet’s youngest member and its only Dalit representative when he joined in 1946.

M.C. Rajah served as the first elected president of the All India Depressed Classes Association, formed in Nagpur; B.R. Ambedkar, though a leading figure of the wider depressed-classes movement, was not associated with founding this particular organisation and instead formed his own All India Depressed Classes Congress in 1930 after growing disagreements over strategy, including the Association’s support for reserved/separate electorates. This organisational split reflects the genuine diversity of leadership and strategic approaches within the early 20th-century movement for depressed-classes rights, rather than a single unified body under Ambedkar alone. Ambedkar’s own influence would grow enormously in subsequent decades, but the Association itself predates his most prominent period of leadership.