Vijay Goel: A second coming in union ministerial council

New Delhi, July 5  Former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Delhi unit chief, Vijay Goel, represents Rajasthan in the Rajya Sabha.

For Goel it is back in the union council of ministers after a stint from 2001 to 2004. He was sworn-in on Tuesday as Minister of State in the Union Council of Ministers.

Once a known lieutenant of the late Pramod Mahajan, Goel was Union Minister in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) under Atal Behari Vajpayee from 2001 to 2004. 

He also served as Union Minister of State of Labour, Parliamentary Affairs, Statistics and Programme Implementation and Youth Affairs and Sports. 

Goel has been a member of the 11th, 12th and 13th Lok Sabha as a representative of Delhi's busy Chandni Chowk parliamentary segment but lost from New Delhi constituency in 2009.

Goel, 62, has also served as the BJP general secretary in-charge of states like Haryana and Assam.

He was a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and was jailed during the Emergency in the 1970s. 

After his release from jail, Goel became president of Delhi University Students' Union in 1977 as a candidate of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad.

In April this year, Goel was in the news when he was fined for flouting Delhi's Odd-Even traffic norms while registering a protest against the Arvind Kejriwal government's decision.

On July 2, the Rajya Sabha MP protested outside the residence of Delhi Chief Minister against an alleged Rs 400 crore tanker scam and demanded Kejriwal's resignation for suppressing information.

In 2013 the then BJP chief Rajnath Singh appointed Goel as the Delhi unit chief months ahead of the assembly elections in the backdrop of the party having tasted three consecutive defeats in 1998, 2003 and 2008.