Arjun Ram Meghwal Replaces Kiren Rijiju as Law Minister – Who Is He?

Minister of State in the Ministry of Law and Justice Arjun Ram Meghwal

(Photo: Altered by Vibhushita Singh/ The Quint)

Video Producer: Aparna Singh

Video Editor: Karuna Mishra

In a surprise Cabinet reshuffle on Thursday, 18 May, former IAS officer and three-time MP Arjun Ram Meghwal was elevated to the post of Minister of State in the Ministry of Law and Justice, replacing Kiren Rijiju. This will be in addition to his existing portfolios in the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Ministry of Culture.

Meghwal, who hails from Rajasthan, was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 2009 from Bikaner constituency, a seat that is reserved for the Scheduled Castes. In his second term as MP, he was made the chief whip of the party and given the charge of Minister of State for Ministry of Water Resources, River Development & Ganga Rejuvenation as well as Parliamentary Affairs.

In 2019 General Elections, he defeated his cousin and Indian National Congress rival Madan Gopal Meghwal by a margin of 2,64,081 votes to retain the seat for the third time.

Meghwal was born on 20 December 1953 in Kisamidesar village in the Bikaner district.

Meghwal holds a law degree, which he earned in 1977. He also has a master's degree in Political Science and an MBA. He served as an IAS officer in various capacities in the Rajasthan cadre.

Ahead of the Rajasthan assembly elections later in the year, the BJP may want to project Meghwal as a prominent Dalit leader in the state. He is a frequent columnist in Indian publications and has penned a number of articles on India's first law minister and architect of the Constitution, Dr BR Ambedkar, albeit from the BJP's ideological point of view. From 2011-14, he was co-chairman of the Committee on the Reservation in Judiciary, under the National Commission for Scheduled Castes. In 2013, he was also a member of the Committee on the Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

In 2016, he had made headlines for cycling up the Raisina Hill to the Rashtrapati Bhavan for his swearing-in as a Union Minister of State. “I have been cycling to Parliament and other places for quite some time now. It is good,” he had told reporters.

He was again in news in 2020 when a video had gone viral in which he was seen promoting a papad brand, claiming the papad boosts a person's immunity and helps in fighting coronavirus. This claim was widely mocked by social media users.

In a controversial statement in 2018, he had claimed that the mob lynchings of Muslims by mobsters on the accusations of cow smuggling was a conspiracy against Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popularity. His statement had come right after a Muslim man, Akbar Khan, was killed in Rajasthan's Alwar district.

"As Modiji becomes more popular, such incidents will take place. When Bihar elections happened, we had award wapsi... When UP elections came, mob lynching happened. Now 2019 elections are about to take place and again, something will happen. Incidents of intolerance will take place. Because schemes brought by Modi-ji are making a difference at the ground level, this is a reaction," he had said.

As a law minister, he will be closely watched for his stance on issues such as the collegium system, reservations in higher judiciary, and the balance between the courts and the executive.