Ravi Shankar Prasad is the new Telecom Minister

Sworn as the Cabinet Minister a couple of hours back, BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad is charged with Telecom & Law portfolios.

A distinguished senior advocate at the Supreme Court, Prasad began his political career as a student leader in 1970 in Bihar, under the leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan and was jailed during the Emergency. His association with Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad and RSS goes back a long way. His father Thakur Prasad was a senior advocate at the Patna High Court and one of the founders of the Jan Sangh, which is now the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP).

Prasad who has been a member of the BJP's National Executive since 1995 became an MP in 2000 and Minister of State (Coal & Mines) in 2001 under the Vajpayee government. He was also made Minister of State in the Ministry of Law and Justice in July 2002. In 2006, he became the national spokesperson of BJP and was also elected to the Rajya Sabha from Bihar. In 2010, he was appointed general secretary of the BJP and was re-elected to the Rajya Sabha from Bihar for a third consecutive term in 2012.

Prasad earned his LLB degree from Patna University and started his practice in Patna High Court in 1980. He was the chief counsel in the fodder scam against Bihar's chief minister Laloo Prasad Yadav. And he is also referred to as the lawyer of Ramlala (Hindu God Lord Ram) for representing the Hindu groups in the Ayodhya suit, in the Allahabad High Court.