Both Ashwini Vaishnaw and Bhupender Yadav, the election co in-charge, are the talk of the town following BJP’s decisive victories in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. Both leaders belong to Rajasthan, but as the election co-incharge, they have worked tirelessly in Maharashtra.
When the cabinet was reorganized in July 2021, Vaishnaw was assigned to the Ministry of Telecommunications and Electronics & IT. He had been discharging his duties with these two ministries successfully, and was later assigned to the Railway Ministry which he has been managing since. In June 2024, after the derailment of two trains that collided at Rangpani station in West Bengal, Ashwini Vaishnaw himself visited the place to oversee relief and rescue operations.
Corporate Career and Administrative Expertise
Vaishnaw has an extensive corporate background and administrative experience. He joined the IAS in 1994 and served as collector of Balasore and Cuttack in Odisha. He played a key role in real-time data analysis during the 1999 cyclone tragedy and helped the government in its rescue operations. In 2003, he was appointed as Deputy Secretary in the PMO by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, for which he developed a model for public-private partnerships in infrastructure. The NDA lost in 2004, but Vajpayee still trusted him enough to make him his personal secretary.
Ashwini Vaishnaw holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business in Pennsylvania. He served as Managing Director at GE Transportation in India and later held senior positions at Siemens. Vaishnaw then set up an automotive component manufacturing unit in Gujarat. In June 2019, he was nominated to the Rajya Sabha from Odisha. He believes in attracting investment to strengthen the economy, emphasizing investment over consumption.
Election war room expert and strategist at BJP
Few know the fact that Ashwini Vaishnaw is also a war room election expert at the BJP. When it comes to Lok Sabha polls, he was the one handling the Delhi war room with ground-level data analysis, crafting strategies, and consolidating voter support for the party. Vaishnaw’s skills in technology and analytics have served as a tremendous plus for the BJP.
He has a clean image, and even Odisha’s Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik supported him for his Rajya Sabha nomination, despite the political differences between them. During the recent elections, Vaishnaw, along with Bhupender Yadav, tackled the challenges posed by the Maratha reservation movement and managed to unite various dissatisfied factions. Additionally, they worked on bringing the backward communities into the BJP fold, countering the Congress’ narrative about the BJP “abolishing the constitution” in Maharashtra.
Ashwini Vaishnaw was on the ground. In September, he traveled in a Mumbai local train for 27 kilometers, where passengers interacted with him, sharing their issues and taking selfies. In October 2024, he inaugurated the ‘Shhetkari Samruddhi’ special farmer train from Deolali to Danapur, Bihar, where farmers could send their produce to Bihar for just 4 rupees per kilogram. Interestingly, the railway budget of Maharashtra has risen from only Rs 1,171 crores in previous years to Rs 15,940 crores in 2024. In October, he also met loco pilots at Nashik.
As Railway Minister, Vaishnaw has left a mark despite all the motivated onslaught from the left-liberal lobby. During the tragic train accident in Balasore, Odisha, where 288 people died, Vaishnaw visited the site, and stayed there for days, meeting local people, and overseeing the relief efforts. It was a rare sight for a rail minister to be so deeply involved in the aftermath of a disaster, talking to the injured, visiting hospitals, and meeting local officials.
Ashwini Vaishnaw remains an invaluable asset for the BJP. He provides technical expertise and helps the party craft strategic, data-driven political campaigns that shape the ground-level political landscape.
