E-Paper
Two new faces from Bihar in Modi cabinet
R C P Singh Ram Chandra Prasad Singh, 63, a former IAS officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre, joined politics in 2010 after taking voluntary retirement
R C P Singh
Ram Chandra Prasad Singh, 63, a former IAS officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre, joined politics in 2010 after taking voluntary retirement. He is a Rajya Sabha member from JD(U) and its national president too.
A native of Nalanda district, Singh is a confidant of CM Nitish Kumar and served as his personal secretary when the JD(U) strongman was a minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. He also served as special secretary to Nitish Kumar during the latter’s stint as railway minister and later worked as principal secretary during Kumar’s stint as chief minister in his first term.
In a surprise move last year, Kumar stepped down as JD(U) chief and handpicked Singh to head the party.
Singh, who joined IAS in 1984, studied at JNU. He has two daughters. The elder one, Lipi Singh, is a 2016-batch IPS officer.
Pashupati Kumar Paras
The younger brother of Lok Janshakti Party founder late Ram Vilas Paswan, is a sitting MP from Hajipur. Paras started his political innings in 1977 with his election as MLA from Alauli in Khagaria, a seat he has represented multiple times.
Paras, 68, who mainly worked in the shadow of his union minister brother, shot into national limelight only last month when he, along with five of the six LJP MPs, staged a coup against Paswan’s son and Jamui MP Chirag Paswan and split the party. Both factions now claim to be real LJP.
Paras, one of the founding members of the party formed in 2000, has served as its Bihar unit president. He has been minister for animal husbandry and fisheries department in the NDA government in Bihar.
Paras is considered more an organizational man. He is said to have opposed Chirag Paswan’s decision to go alone in the 2020 assembly polls.
