July 8 2021: The enlarged council of ministers announced by the Indian government yesterday, places seasoned technology veterans at the head of information technology and communication ministries. They all have engineering qualifications and a wealth of experience in the relevant industry across, global, private and public entities.
The new cabinet minister in charge of Communications and Electronics & Information Technologyis Ashwini Vaishnaw.
He is assisted by two ministers of state: Rajeev Chandrasekhar whose portfolio is Skill Development & Entrepreneurship as well as Electronics & Information Technology – and Devusinh Chauhan who is to handle Communications.
Vaishnaw (50 years) is M.Tech from IIT Kanpur, who joined the IAS in 1994 with an all-India rank of 27. In 2008, Vaishnaw did his MBA from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. When he came back to India he joined GE Transportation as Managing Director. Then he joined Siemens as the Vice President - Locomotives & Head Urban Infrastructure Strategy.
Vaishnaw served as a collector in Balasore and Cuttack districts. He worked in Odisha till 2003 when he was appointed as deputy secretary in the office of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. After his brief stint in the PMO where he contributed to creating the public-private-partnership framework in infrastructure projects, Vaishnav was appointed as Vajpayee's private secretary after the BJP-led NDA lost the election in 2004.
In 2006, he became deputy chairman of Mormugao Port Trust, where he worked for next two years. He is currently Member of Parliament representing Odisha State in the Rajya Sabha.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar ( 57) studied electrical engineering at Manipal Institute of Technology. He completed Masters in Computer Science in 1988 from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. He was handpicked by Vinod Dham to Intel and he worked there from 1988 to 1991. In Intel he was part of the architectural team that designed the Intel 486 processor.
In 1991 after returning to India he became part of BPL Group. In 1994, Chandrasekhar founded BPL Mobile. It was one of the major telecom companies in India then, with license over places such as Mumbai. In July 2005, he sold his 64 percent stake in BPL Communications to Essar Group for US$1.1 billion.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar was an Independent member of Rajya Sabha representing Karnataka from April 2006 to April 2018. In April 2018, he was re-elected to the Rajya Sabha from Karnataka for a third six-year term as a BJP member.
Devusinh Chauhan (57) did his Diploma Course in Electrical Engineering from the Government Polytechnic College in Porbandar (Gujarat). From 1989 to 2002, Chauhan worked as an engineer with All India Radio (AIR). He is member of parliament to the 16th Lok Sabha from Kheda (Lok Sabha constituency), Gujarat.
(biographical details, from Wikipedia)