Ravi Shankar Prasad

Profile Overview

Ravi Shankar Prasad (born 30 August 1954) is an Indian politician and lawyer who served as 1st Minister of Electronics and Information Technology from 2016 to 2019 and 2019 to 2021. He is the member of Bharatiya Janata Party and Member of Parliament since 2000, first in the Rajya Sabha (2000–2019) and then in the Lok Sabha (since 2019), Prasad has served as Union Minister multiple times: As Minister of State, he served in the ministries of Coal (2001–2003), Law and Justice (2002–2003), and Information and Broadcasting (2003–2004) under Atal Bihari Vajpayee's premiership; as Cabinet Minister, he held the Law and Justice (2014, 2016–2021), Communications (2014–2016, 2019–2021) portfolios under Narendra Modi's premiership.
His term as Union Minister was marked with the repeal of 1500 archaic laws, handling of litigation over the purchase of Rafale fighter planes, and digitization of 15000 trial courts. On the other hand, his tenure also saw controversy over the proposed National Judicial Appointments Commission, constant friction between the judiciary and the executive, and rows with social media platforms Twitter and Facebook over local rules.