Ram Vilas Paswan

LJP chief's Dalit credentials helped him tie up with the BJP

Food, Consumer Affairs Minister

 

Date & year of birth: July 5, 1946

Consituency: Hajipur, Bihar

Whether represented the constituency before: No

Whether held ministerial charge earlier: No

Ram Vilas Paswan, the chief of the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), is back in the Lok Sabha. The LJP chief’s Dalit credentials helped him to tie up with the BJP in a pre-poll alliance ditching the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), as Narendra Modi was keen to reach out to Dalits.

Paswan is known to be politically astute often derided as a “political opportunist”: He has served as Union minister in different governments from the United Front, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA).

In 2004, he had parted ways with the NDA and aligned with the Congress-led alliance. Riding on the Modi wave, the LJP has won six seats from Bihar this time. He was Union minister of labour and welfare in the V P Singh government in 1989. In 1996, he became the Union railway minister and was in office till 1998.

Subsequently, he was Union communications minister from October 1999 to September 2001, after which he was coal and mines minister till April 2002. His constituency, Hajipur, a reserved constituency from where he has won eight times has benefited from his largesse during his several stints at the Centre with a Zonal railway headquarters and several Central institutes.  In 2009, he had lost to the Janata Dal (United)’s Ram Sundar Das, a former chief minister, by 37,954 votes in 2009.