New Delhi. BJP leader Giriraj Singh (71), who is often in the headlines due to his sharp statements on the opposition, is in the headlines this time not because of any controversial statement, but because of his election strategy. In the results declared on Tuesday, Giriraj Singh won the Begusarai seat by defeating his nearest rival Awadhesh Kumar Rai of the Communist Party of India by a margin of more than 81 thousand votes. The CPI had last won this seat in 1967. Begusarai seat, one of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar, was won by BJP’s Bhola Singh in the 2014 general elections and Giriraj in 2019. This time the election for this seat was held on 13 May in the fourth phase.
Giriraj Singh, who raises the flag of Hindutva, is considered close to Prime Minister Modi and Amit Shah. Just before the elections, he accused the Congress of doing love jihad and land jihad in the country under the politics of appeasement. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Giriraj Singh surprised everyone by getting 6,92,193 votes as a BJP candidate. Giriraj Singh got 56.5 percent of the total votes while the second-placed Communist Party of India candidate Kanhaiya Kumar had to be content with only 2,69,976 votes (22 percent).
RJD’s Md. Tanveer Hasan secured 1,98,233 votes (16.2%) and finished third. Giriraj won the 2014 Lok Sabha election from Bihar’s Nawada seat and got a total of 3,90,248 votes. Since independence, only a candidate from this caste has won the Bhumihar-dominated Begusarai seat. However, the 2009 general election is an exception when Janata Dal-United (JDU) candidate Dr. Monajir Hasan won this seat. Giriraj was a member of the Bihar Legislative Council from 2002 to May 2014. During this period, from 2010 to 2013, he was a minister in the Animal Husbandry and Fisheries Resource Development Ministry in the Bihar government. After reaching the Lok Sabha for the first time from the Nawada Lok Sabha seat, Giriraj was made a minister at the Centre on 9 November 2014. He was appointed as Union Minister of State (Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises) which he held till 3 September 2017.
Later in this ministry, he worked as Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) from 3 September 2017 to 25 May 2019. After being re-elected to the Lok Sabha from Begusarai seat, Giriraj was made a cabinet minister at the Center for the first time on 30 May 2019. He worked as the Union Minister of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairy Department till 7 July 2021. But in the reshuffle in the Modi cabinet in 2021, his stature increased and he was made the cabinet minister of two ministries (Ministry of Rural Development and Ministry of Panchayati Raj) which he still holds. Giriraj was born on 8 September 1952 in Barhiya in Lakhisarai district of Bihar as the son of father Ram Avtar Singh and mother Tara Devi. Giriraj, a graduate from Magadh University, is married to Uma Sinha and the couple has a daughter.
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