Amid talk of strain in JD(U)-RJD ties, Bihar gets a new education minister: Who is Alok Kumar Mehta?

A day after Bihar education official K K Pathak, the increasingly prominent additional chief secretary of the department, returned to work, scotching rumours of his resignation, the state government on Saturday removed Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Chandra Shekhar as the education minister and named him the minister of the low-profile sugarcane department. The government replaced him with senior RJD leader Alok Kumar Mehta, a long-trusted aide of party chief Lalu Prasad who held the ministry of revenue and land reforms.

Mehta, 57, has been elevated to the education department for a number of reasons, ranging from his experience to his proximity to Lalu. He is well qualified with a Bachelor’s degree in engineering and was also elected to the Lok Sabha as the Samastipur MP in 2004. A second-generation politician in his family, his father Tulsidas played an active role in the Janata Dal’s protest against BJP leader L K Advani’s rath yatra to Ayodhya in October 1990, and later served as a minister in Lalu’s Cabinet.

Mehta, who entered active politics in 1994, rose from a leader in the RJD’s youth wing to the state unit and then the national unit of the party. He began his electoral career as an MP when he won from Samastipur seat in 2004 with 50.6% of the vote share. A member of the OBC Kushwaha community, he is also prominent as the Kushwaha face of the party that is otherwise dominated by the Yadav-Muslim combination.

When Tejashwi Prasad Yadav decided to join active politics in 2012, Mehta was among a few senior leaders who took it upon themselves to guide and groom him. In the 2015 Assembly polls, when the ruling JD(U) and RJD fought in an alliance, Mehta won from the Ujiarpur Assembly seat with 52.4% of the vote share