Table of Contents
EARLY LIFE
- Prasad was born in Patna on 30 August 1954. His father Thakur Prasad was a senior advocate at the Patna High Court and one of the leading founders of the Jan Sangh, the predecessor of the Bharatiya Janata Party. His sister, Anuradha Prasad wife of Mr Rajeev Shukla is the owner of BAG Films and Media Ltd.
- Prasad earned BA Hons, MA (Political Science) and LL.B degrees from Patna University.
CAREER
- Prasad began his political career as a student leader in the 1970s organising protests against Indira Gandhi’s government and was also jailed when the emergency was imposed.
- He worked in the student movement in Bihar under the leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan and was an active volunteer of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).
- During his college days he was Assistant General Secretary of the Patna University Students Union and member of the Senate, Finance Committee, Arts and Law Faculties of the University.
CAREER
- Since 1995 Prasad has been a member of BJP National Executive, the party’s top policymaking body.
- August 1995: Became Member, National Executive Committee, Bharatiya Janata Party (B.J.P.)
- April 2000: Elected to Rajya Sabha for the first time.
- September 2001: Minister of State in the Ministry of Coal and Mines.
- July 2002: Minister of State in the Ministry of Law and Justice (Additional charge).
- January 2003: Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (India)
CAREER
- August 2005: Appointed as the National Spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
- March 2006: Elected to Rajya Sabha for the second time.
- August 2006: Member, Standing Committee on Information Technology
- April 2010: All India General Secretary & Chief National Spokesperson of BJP.
- April 2012: Elected to the Rajya Sabha for the third time.
- May 2012: Became Deputy Leader of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Rajya Sabha.
- May 2014: Took oath as Union Minister for Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India.
- April 2018: Elected to the Rajya Sabha for the fourth time.
- 23 May 2019: Elected to the Loksabha.
INITIATIVES
- Ravi Shankar Prasad was appointed as Minister for Communications and IT at the time of formation of the Government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
- In July 2016, this Ministry of bifurcated into the Ministry of Communications and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. The new Ministry of Electronics and IT remained with Ravi Shankar Prasad after this bifurcation.
INITIATIVES
- Growth in Electronics Manufacturing : As Minister in charge of Electronics and IT Ministry, Ravi Shankar Prasad encouraged electronics manufacturing in India. Under his leadership, India became the second largest mobile phone producers in the world in 2019 from just two mobile factories in 2014.
- Common Service Centers: Ravi Shankar Prasad took efforts to make Digital India an inclusive program to empower ordinary citizens of India. There were only 83,000 Common Service Centers in May, 2014. By March, 2019, 310,000 Centers were made functional across 200,000 Gram Panchayats or village clusters out of 250,000 Gram Panchayats of India.
INITIATIVES
- StreeSwabhiman Initiative: Leveraging the vast network of Common Service Centers, Ravi Shankar Prasad encouraged manufacturing of low cost sanitary pads at these centers by rural women.
- Digital Literacy: Pradhan Mantri Digital SakshartaAbhiyan was started as the biggest digital literacy mission to make at least one adult in every household digitally literate.
- Efforts Made to Promote Emerging Technologies
- Promotion of Digital Services
INITIATIVES
- He has adopted the village of Alawalpur under Fatuha block of Patna district as a model village to be developed under the Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojana.
- President of India gave his assent to the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights of Marriage) Act, 2019 on 1 August 2019.
- This Law seeks to criminalize the social evil of instant triple talaq practiced in Muslim community, whereby a husband could desert his wife by a mere pronouncement of the word Talaq three times.
INITIATIVES
- Recently UK based think tank Apolitical adjudged him as one of the top twenty leaders in the list of 100 most influential people in Digital Government 2018.
- Responding to the legal notice served by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Whatsapp took several steps such as mentioning the word forwarded on every message that was forwarded by an user. Whatsapp has also restricted the number of forwarded messages to a maximum of five.
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