Meet the arduous Railway Minister who was once a top bureaucrat of Odisha – Ashwini Vaishnav

Former IAS Officer Ashwini Vaishnav, a bureaucrat-turned-politician has taken charge as India’s new Railways Minister and IT Minister in the first major cabinet reshuffle of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet on July 8, 2021.

A 1994 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, he first came into prominence in June 2019 when the ruling Biju Janata Dal in Odisha and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supported his candidature in Rajya Sabha polls. He is a member of the Rajya Sabha from Odisha. He has been appointed the Minister of Railways, Minister of Communications and Minister of Electronics and Information Technology.

Born in Jodhpur, Vaishnav, 50, graduated from Rajasthan’s Jai Narain Vyas University in 1992 with a gold medal in electronics and communications engineering. Two years later, he joined the IAS. His work was recognised when days before the super cyclone hit Odisha in 1999, Vaishnav tracked a US Navy website to know its path to keep top officials informed about it and help them deal better with the natural disaster. His timely evacuation of 10,000 people in Balasore despite a lack of shelters also earned him much acclaim.

Vaishnav worked in Odisha till 2003 when he joined Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s office as deputy secretary. In 2006, he became the deputy chairman of Mormugao Port Trust, where he worked for two years before pursuing a Master of Business Administration course from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He later quit IAS and worked in private companies until 2012. He was in Gujarat to set up two components manufacturing units of automobile companies Maruti and Honda in 2012. Vaishnav lived in a container for seven months so that the work could be finished in record time.

Ashwini Vaishnav has taken charge of the railway’s ministry when it was struggling with a sharp fall in passenger traffic because of the pandemic but has an exciting journey ahead with bullet trains, private-sector rail services, and high-speed freight movement on the horizon. Vaishnav is committed for t implementing the National Rail Plan that aims to privatize some trains and stations, develop dedicated freight corridors, electrify and modernise the network and set up the national high-speed rail project