Hope, Piyush Goyal will be the most effective Rly Minister than Prabhu
New Delhi : Power minister Piyush Goyal, newly elevated to cabinet rank, was on Sunday given charge of the railway ministry. Goyal replaces Suresh Prabhu who had offered to resign after a spate of train accidents in the last month. Analysts said the BJP leadership felt Goyal has done a competent job in implementing reforms in the power and coal sectors. Earlier on Sunday, Prabhu thanked all his railway ministry colleagues in a tweet.
Prabhu also congratulated Goyal and three other Union ministers who were on Sunday elevated to Cabinet rank. Goyal has been seen to have done a more-than-competent job by holding scam-free auctions in coal. He is also seen to have brought about a turnaround in production, ending days of persistent domestic short supplies that had led to higher imports. The slower consumption in recent months has, in fact, created a problem of plenty.
In the power sector, the difficult task of getting state utilities to recast their debt and improve accountability and viability in transmission and tariffs has got off the ground through the Udaan scheme.
BIOGRAPHY
Piyush Goyal : “Good economics makes for good politics. We are today at the cusp of a development explosion.”
Piyush Goyal is the Minister for Railways, Government of India. He is currently a Member of Rajya Sabha and was earlier the National Treasurer of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He headed the BJP’s Information Communication Campaign Committee and oversaw the publicity and advertising campaign of the party including the social media outreach for the Indian General Elections 2014.
Piyush Goyal has had a brilliant academic record – all-India second rank holder Chartered Accountant and second rank holder in Law in Mumbai University. He was a well-known investment banker and he has advised top corporates on management strategy and growth. He earlier served on the Board of India’s largest commercial bank, the State Bank of India and also Bank of Baroda.
He has participated in Leadership Programs at Yale University (2011), Oxford University (2012) and Princeton University (2013) and is currently pursuing the Owner/President Management (OPM) Program at Harvard Business School.
During his 29 years long political career, he has held several important positions at different levels in BJP and is in the National Executive of the Party. He had the privilege of being mentored by stalwarts such as Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee, former Prime Minister of India. He was also nominated by the Government of India to the prestigious Task Force for Interlinking of Rivers in 2002.
His father Late Ved Prakash Goyal was Union Minister of Shipping and the National Treasurer of BJP for over two decades. His mother Chandrakanta Goyal was elected thrice to the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly from Mumbai.
He is married to Ms. Seema, an active social worker and has two children – Dhruv, working in New York, and Radhika, studying at Harvard University.
