Ravi Shankar Prasad is the new IT & Telecom Minister

Senior BJP leader and party spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad was on Tuesday named the new telecom minister in the Narendra Modi cabinet. Like his predecessor in the UPA government, Kapil Sibal, Prasad will hold both communications and law & justice portfolios.

Ravi Shankar Prasad, who took oath as a Cabinet minister, is man for all seasons for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). A prominent BJP leader from Bihar, Prasad is a strong and persuasive debater on television in defence of his party's views. He is popularly known as Lord Ram's lawyer.

Coming from an eminent Kayastha family from Patna and a leading advocate, Ravi Shankar Prasad is the lawyer in the Ayodhya Ram temple title suit case. He represents 'Ram Lalla', the deity, in the case. Ravi Shankar Prasad's father Thakur Prasad was one of the founders of the Jan Sangh, the predecessor of the BJP.

Born on August 30, 1954, in Patna, Prasad, a lawyer and politician, was deputy leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha. He holds a masters degree in political science from Patna University and also a law degree.

He began his political career as a student leader in the 1970s organising protests against the late Indira Gandhi's government. He also worked in the student movement in Bihar under the Jayaprakash Narayan's leadership and was imprisoned during the Emergency.

During his college days, Prasad was assistant general secretary, Patna University Students Union, and member of the senate, finance committee, arts & law faculties of the university.

In 1999, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was sworn in as the country's prime minister for the third time, Mr Prasad, 59, was inducted in his council of ministers, and held the portfolios of information and broadcasting, coal and mines and law and justice. He was elected to the Rajya Sabha soon after.

He was named as a BJP spokesman in 2007, and as its chief spokesman in 2007. He was appointed as a BJP general secretary in 2010. Two years later, he was nominated as the party's deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha.