P. V. Narasimha Rao
Prime Minister of India (1991-1996)
Pamulaparthi Venkata Narasimha Rao (28 June 1921 – 23 December 2004) was an Indian independence activist, lawyer, and politician from the Indian National Congress who served as the prime minister of India from 1991 to 1996. He was the first person from South India and the second person from a non-Hindi speaking background to be prime minister. He is known for his role in initiating India's economic liberalisation following an economic crisis in 1991, a process that has been sustained and expanded by every successive prime minister of the country.
Prior to his premiership, he served as the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, and later also held high-order portfolios of the union government, such as Defence, Home Affairs and External Affairs. In 1991 Indian general election, the Indian National Congress led by him, won 244 seats, and thereafter, he, along with external support from other parties, formed a minority government with him being the prime minister.As prime minister, Rao adopted to avert the impending 1991 economic crisis, the reforms progressed furthest in the areas of opening up to foreign investment, reforming capital markets, deregulating domestic business, and reforming the trade regime. Trade reforms and changes in the regulation of foreign direct investment were introduced to open India to foreign trade while stabilising external loans.
In 2024, he was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, by the government of India. In 2025, his portrait was unveiled at Raj Bhavan on the eve of his birth anniversary by the Governor of Telangana Jishnu Dev Varma.
Early life and background
P. V. Narasimha Rao was born on 28 June 1921 in a Telugu family in the village of Laknepalli village of Narsampet mandal, Warangal district of present-day Telangana (then part of Hyderabad State). His father Sitarama Rao and mother Rukma Bai hailed from agrarian families.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “P. V. Narasimha Rao” as prime Minister of India (1991-1996). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as prime Minister of India (1991-1996). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q275146. VIAF identifies the subject as 114384722. The Library of Congress control number is n84103890. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1921, 2004, 1991 and 1996.
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This entry incorporates text from “P. V. Narasimha Rao” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.