Ram Vilas Paswan’s Record Of Working With Six Prime Ministers

Ram Vilas Paswan’s record of working in the cabinet of six prime ministers: Ramvilas Paswan Passes Away. Ram Vilas Paswan, a senior Dalit leader in Bihar and a consumer minister in the Modi government, died on Thursday.

For a long time, his health was deteriorating and Delhi’s escorts were hospitalized. Ram Vilas Paswan left the Bihar Police job and entered politics.

Even during the popularity of Kanshi Ram and Mayawati, he remained as a strong leader of the Dalits of Bihar for a long time.

Ram Vilas Paswan’s political journey began in the 1960s as a member of the Bihar Legislative Assembly and he came into the limelight from the 1977 Lok Sabha elections after the Emergency when he won the Hajipur seat with a record margin of four lakh votes.

He worked with many Prime Ministers ranging from VP Singh to Deve Gowda-Gujral to Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh, and Narendra Modi.

The name of Ram Vilas Paswan, who is capable of sensing the political atmosphere, was associated with the unique achievement of working as a minister in the cabinet of six Prime Ministers.

After his victory in 1989, he was inducted into VP Singh’s cabinet for the first time and made Labor Minister. Within a decade he became the Railway Minister in the governments of HD Deve Gowda and IK Gujral.

The ‘Janata Dal’ faction in which Paswan was associated within the 1990s supported the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance and was made the Minister of Communications.

He later became the Minister of Coal in the government headed by Atal Bihari Bajpayee. He later established the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP). He stepped out of Atal Bihari Bajpayee’s cabinet in protest after the 2002 Gujarat riots and went to the Congress-led UPA.

After the UPA came to power only two years later, he was appointed Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers in Manmohan Singh’s government. He was active in the United Socialist Party (Sansopa) since the sixties.

Went to jail in an emergency, stayed with Rajnarayan and Charan Singh. He came to the Lok Sabha in 1977 with a record number of votes, but his politics were with Champa VP Singh whom Sharad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan kept around him after the implementation of the Mandal Commission report.

VP Singh was a member of the Rajya Sabha, so Ram Vilas was the leader of the ruling coalition in the Lok Sabha. At that time, Ram Vilas Paswan built a base among the Dalits and Muslims of Bihar which had remained with him till now.

Ram Vilas Paswan, who holds the record of electoral victory, also lost in 1984 from the same Hajipur from where he continued to win by record votes. Even in 2009, he was defeated by an old socialist like Ramsundar Das, his strongman Hajipur.

He did not get a ministerial post during the UPA-II tenure after the defeat. Prior to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP openly welcomed Paswan and gave him seven seats to contest in Bihar.

Bihar LJP won six seats. Ramvilas Paswan served as the Minister for Food, Public Distribution, and Consumer Affairs during Narendra Modi’s tenure in 2014.

During this, apart from improving the public distribution system, he also effectively solved the crisis in the pulses and sugar sector. He did not contest the Lok Sabha elections due to health in 2019, then elected from Rajya Sabha, and became a minister again.