Among Cabinet ministers, other than Anurag Thakur, Bhupendra Yadav, Dharmendra Pradhan, Kiren Rijiju and former Assam CM Sarbananda Sonowal, no one is from the RSS family. While Jyotiraditya Scindia is a former Congress member, Narayan Rane joined BJP via NCP. RK Singh, Ashwani Vaishnaw, RP Singh and Hardeep Puri served as bureaucrats before joining BJP.
Of 28 state ministers who were inducted, only four had a prior link with the RSS-BJP. Rest of them either come from socialist backgrounds or from independent political parties, like Anupriya Patel of Apna Dal.
Among bigwigs with a ‘direct hotline’ to RSS’ headquarters at Nagpur who were dropped on Wednesday are Ravi Shankar Prasad, Prakash Javdekar, Dr. Harsh Vardhan and Ramesh Pokhariyal ‘Nishank’. Have a look:
Ravi Shankar Prasad belongs to a family whose links with the RSS date back to the 1970s. His father Thakur Prasad was one of the founding members of Bharatiya Jana Sangh and was its state president for 10 years.
Prakash Javadekar, who defended right wing ideology in TV debates, is an RSS activist from his college days. He inherited right-wing ideology from his father who worked with a newspaper founded by Tilak. Javadekar started his political career as a member of ABVP, the student wing of RSS.
