A day after the mega Union Cabinet reshuffle, former bureaucrat Ashwini Vaishnaw has assumed charge of the railways and information technology ministries. Vaishnaw is a BJP Rajya Sabha MP from Odisha since 2019.

Vaishnaw replaces Ravi Shankar Prasad and Piyush Goyal at the top ministries.

A former IAS officer from the Odisha cadre, Vaishnaw was born in Jodhpur. After graduating from Rajasthan’s Jai Narayan Vyas University in electronic and communications engineering with a gold medal to his name, he did his MTech from IIT Kanpur.

Vaishnaw had joined the civil services in 1994 after scoring an all-India rank of 27. He served as deputy secretary in the office of former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Vaishnaw went to the US in 2008 for an MBA at Wharton School business, University of Pennsylvania. After finishing his MBA, he quit the IAS in 2010 and joined GE Transportation as managing director. He also worked as vice president, locomotives and head, urban infrastructure strategy, at Seimens.

Vaishnaw left the corporate world to become an entrepreneur. He set up Three Tee Auto Logistics Private Ltd and Vee Gee Auto Components Private Ltd, two automotive components manufacturing units in Gujarat.

Vaishnaw has taken over the railways portfolio at a time when the government is trying hard to increase the revenue of the important transportation service. The man in charge of the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) is also at loggerheads with foreign social media, especially Twitter.

(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)

First Published:Jul 8, 2021 8:46 PM IST