Meet Jitin Prasada, the ex-Congress leader who took oath as minister in Yogi govt

Jitin Prasada took oath as a Cabinet minister on Friday in the Yogi Adityanath-led UP government.

Prasada quit the Congress and joined BJP in June 2021, the second close aide of Rahul Gandhi leaving the grand old party after current Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia.

Starting his career in 2001 as a Youth Congress general secretary. He rose quickly and was elected as a Member of the Parliament in 2004 and 2009 from UP’s Shahjahanpur and Dhaurahra constituencies.

In his first tenure as Member of the Parliament Jitin Prasad was inducted as Minister of State for Steel and was one of the youngest minister in the Cabinet(April 2008). In 2009, he fought and won the election from Dhaurara, as his home bastion Shahjahanpur came under the delimitation process.

Prasada is an alumnus of The Doon School in Dehradun, around the same time as fellow politicians Jyotiraditya Scindia, Dushyant Singh and Kalikesh Narayan Singh Deo.

Prasada was a part of the G-23 leaders who raised the demand for free and fair organizational election in the Congress in 2020. Before joining the BJP, he was in-charge of West Bengal for Congress.

He comes from a prominent Brahmin family in UP and is the son of Jitendra Prasad, former Congress vice president who was the political advisor to two prime ministers. It is being said that Prasada’s induction as a cabinet minister can prove crucial to the BJP in a state where the Brahmin community amounts for around 13% of the votes.