ND Tiwari’s home district of Nainital is still replete with stories of his struggles and actions taken in public interest. During 1948, as a youth, he was instrumental in getting a four kilometre road built through Shramdan (voluntary labour) from Khutani to Vinayak Padampuri.
Born in 1925 at Padampuri village, he spent his childhood at his maternal grandmother’s in Blayuti village near Kathgodam. His father Poornanand Tiwari was a forest department officer who had left his job to participate in the Independence movement. As a youngster about 17 years old, ND Tiwari was jailed along with his father in the Nainital and Bareily jails for distributing pamphlets and raising slogans against the colonial rulers during the Quit India movement in 1942.
After release from jail in 1944, he did his graduation, PG and LLB from Allahabad University.
He was elected the university’s students union president in 1947 and also won a gold medal in economics. He used to take tuition to finance his higher education there.
Later, at the age of 26 years, he was elected MLA from Nainital (Western) constituency which he contested as a Praja Socialist Party candidate in 1951-52.
During 1963, following efforts of GB Pant, Tiwari joined the Congress party and went on to become a minister in the Congress Government of Uttar Pradesh in 1965. He served as the UP Chief Minister thrice and is credited for being behind the development of Noida.
He is the only CM of Uttarakhand to have completed a full five year term uninterrupted from 2002 to 2007. He established SIIDCUL at Haridwar and Udham Singh Nagar as the CM.
He was also instrumental in establishment of HMT factory in Nainital district and later made repeated attempts for its revival even when out of active politics. It must be written here that he was one man with mutiple contributions.
Locals point out that he had also played a vital role in eliciting focus and action for revival and maintenance of Naini and other lakes here.
It was during his tenure as CM that the State had received a special industrial package approved by the then prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
