Who is Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar, inducted into the Modi Cabinet?

Earlier, he served as Kerala NDA’s vice-chairman during the 2016 Assembly elections and media and communication in-charge in the 2018 Karnataka Assembly elections,

In the run up to the Lok Sabha polls in 2019, he was a member of the party’s committee that drafted the manifesto. He was also co-in charge during the Puducherry Assembly elections earlier this year.

Though Chandrasekhar was born in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, he grew up across the country as his father, a Malayali, was an Air Commodore in the Indian Air Force. He completed his engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology and his masters from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Currently, he is a Member of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, Member of Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Member of the Joint Committee on Data Protection Bill, 2019 and Member of the Consultative Committee on MoE & IT, Ministry of Communications, Member of the Indian Council for World Affairs.

In 1994, Chandrasekhar founded BPL Mobile and is also the founder and Advisor to the Board of Jupiter Capital Pvt. Ltd. Apart from this, he is also the founder-trustee of the Namma Bengaluru Foundation, a not-for-profit organization. He controls assets in the sectors of media, hospitality, technology and entertainment.

He is the vice-chairman of the Vivekananda International Foundation and was the founder of the Flags of Honour Foundation, a non-profit that advocates causes of the Armed Forces. In Rajya Sabha too, Chandrasekhar has raised issues concerning the welfare of the Armed Forces, internet freedom and governance.