Krishna Chandra Pant, informally known as "Raja" was born to the freedom fighter Govind Ballabh Pant and Smt. Kalawati Pant on 10 August 1931 in Bhowali – Kumaon region of the Himalayas, United Provinces. His early years were spent in Nainital and his schooling was in St. Joseph's College, Nainital. He moved to Lucknow, post-independence when his father was appointed as the Chief Minister of the State of Uttar Pradesh. He completed his post graduation from Lucknow University and went to Germany for further studies. In 1957, he married Ila Pant in Nainital.
Executive positions held
Minister of the State for Home Affairs (1971–1973)
In the early 70's, after winning the Lok-Sabha parliamentary election from Nainital, he took over his first ministerial posting as the minister of state for Home Affairs, and resolved two very critical issues of the time. First, he negotiated to maintain Andhra-Telangana as a single state. Secondly he helped the North Eastern states where there was a churning due to Meghalaya being granted full statehood.
Minister of Education
Pant was appointed as the Minister for Education in 1985. During his tenure he came up with some major campaigns like Education for the Blind, Mass Literacy Campaign, Delinking jobs from degrees, Education for all initiative, Model School for all the districts and some major job oriented programmes. He also presented and passed the proposal for setting up an open university that would provide higher education to everyone. It was named Indira Gandhi National Open University – IGNOU.
Pant was Union Minister for Defence for the years 1987–89. The major initiatives taken by him were Modernisation of Defence equipment and services upgrading and making it self–sufficient, improving the foreign ties with Russia, US and other countries. He also played a major role in the Agni and Prithvi missile programmes.
Executive Bodies Positions Held
Chairman of the 10th Finance Commission (1992–95)
Pant was appointed as the Chairman of the 10th Finance Commission by the then Prime Minister Narsimha Rao. He was responsible for giving recommendations for the distributions of the net proceeds of taxes between the Union and the States and also on the norms related to the grants-in-aid allotted to the states to raise their income in addition to other activities like suggesting changes with respect to the net proceeds in terms of additional excise duties etc.
Pant was responsible for heading the Long term strategic planning and formulation of strategy of national security, for the coordination of current decision making and followup of policy implementation and for coordinated intelligence assessment for national security planning and management as the Deputy Chairman of the National Security Council.
The Planning Commission was headed by the then Prime Minister, A.B Vajpayee and K.C Pant was appointed as the Deputy Chairman. He, along with his committee members, focused on agricultural development to achieve the goal of Hunger Free India. To ensure food security, he implemented strategies to double the food production, increase the employment and income in the agricultural sector, improved the rural infrastructure through poverty alleviation schemes and started distributing free food grains to the people below the poverty line. During his tenure, he concentrated on the other sectors too. In the education sector, investment was made in the PM's Special Action Plan for the expansion and improvement of social infrastructure in education. Then, measures were adopted to increase the employment in the country. Measures were taken to improve the health of the industrial, railway and telecommunication sectors. On 1 January 2004 Pant as a Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission in his official statement confirmed that India's GDP growth was at 8%.
Death
K C Pant died on 15 November 2012 at the age of 81. He left behind his wife Ila Pant and two sons.
