George Fernandes, Indian journalist and politician, Minister of Defence for India
George Mathew Fernandes (3 June 1930 – 29 January 2019) was an Indian trade unionist, statesman, and journalist, who served as the 22nd Defence Minister of India from 1998 until 2004. He was a member of Lok Sabha for over 30 years, starting from Bombay (present-day Mumbai) in 1967 till 2009 mostly representing constituencies from Bihar. He was a key member of the Janata Dal and the founder of the Samata Party. He held several ministerial portfolios including communication , industry, railways, and defence.A native of Mangalore, Fernandes was sent to Bangalore in 1946 to be trained as a priest. In 1949, he moved to Bombay, where he joined the socialist trade union movement. Becoming a trade union leader, Fernandes organised many strikes and bandhs in Bombay in the 1950s and 1960s while working with the Indian Railways. He defeated S K Patil of Indian National Congress in the 1967 parliamentary elections from the Bombay South constituency. He organised the 1974 Railway strike, when he was President of the All India Railwaymen's Federation. Fernandes went underground during the Emergency era of 1975, while challenging Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for imposing a state of emergency, but in 1976 he was arrested and tried in the infamous Baroda dynamite case.

In 1977, after the Emergency had been lifted, Fernandes won the Muzaffarpur seat in Bihar in absentia and was appointed Union Minister for Industries. During his tenure as union minister, he ordered American multinationals IBM and Coca-Cola to leave the country, due to investment violations. He was the driving force behind the Konkan Railway project during his tenure as railway minister from 1989 to 1990. He was a defence minister in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government (1998–2004), when the Kargil War broke out between India and Pakistan, and India conducted its nuclear tests at Pokhran. A veteran socialist, Fernandes has been dogged by various controversies, including the Barak Missile scandal and the Tehelka affair. George Fernandes won nine Lok Sabha elections from 1967 to 2004. He died on 29 January 2019 at the age of 88. He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan India's second highest civilian award posthumously in 2020 in the field of Public Affairs.