Piyush Goyal heads to 'motherland' for a missed rite of passage
Piyush Goyal, 59, the Minister of Commerce and Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Textiles, as well as Leader of the House in Rajya Sabha, hit the campaign trail must be when he was a young boy when his mother fought corporation polls in Mumbai after the Emergency and later assembly polls in the nineties.
Now Goyal is part of a sizable group of BJP's Rajya Sabha MPs who have been fielded in Lok Sabha elections as the party aims to cross the 400-seat mark. Names of Goyal, Sarbananda Sonowal, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, V Muraleedharan: Anil Baluni and Bhupendra Yadav have been announced while Nirmala Sitharaman and S. Jaishankar are likely to join this group.
In his 14-year-long career (for he was first elected to Rajya Sabha in 2010), Goyal has emerged as a deft minister and a politician well-versed in the art of the possible. His first electoral tryst will not be a coming-of-age act but a rite of passage he skipped as he gained stature. The go-to man for the party as well as the government, Goyal is now going to the people. He has been fielded from Mumbai North constituency.
The making of Piyush Goyal
Piyush Goyal will be asking for votes for himself for the first time. Earlier he has canvassed for Lal Krishan Advani in 1989, and the whole party and its prime-ministerial candidate Narendra Modi in 2014 when he was given the charge of mobilizing the youth and handling party's information and communication campaign.
One of the key persons who sold brand Modi to Indian voters, now Goyal will be
