From Intel to Minister of State, the journey of Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the Bengaluru-based third time Member of Parliament, was sworn in as the Minister of State in the Cabinet reshuffle on July 7.

The portfolio he will handle include Minister of State  in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.

An engineering graduate from Manipal Institute of Technology, Chandrasekhar started his journey at Intel in Silicon Valley, where he was a part of the team that designed Pentium under the now CEO Pat Gelsinger and Vinod Dham, who is called the father of Pentium chips. In his office in Benglauru, the framed Intel chip hangs in his office with more than a dozen names of people, who worked on the chip, written on it.

After his short stint in the US, Chandrasekhar came back to India in 1991 and founded BPL Mobile in 1994, where he built the country’s largest Cellular Network. He exited the company by selling his stakes to the Essar group for $1.1 billion in 2005.

Chandrasekhar then later founded private equity firm Jupiter Capital in 2006, where he was Chairman till 2014.

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He was the independent member of Rajya Sabha from April 2006 to 2018, when he was re-elected to Rajya Sabha from Karnataka as a member of BJP. Given that he was an independent MP, he needed to be smart and quick given the limited time posed to him in the parliament, says his former colleagues.

V Anand, former head – Public Affairs of Rajeev Chandrasekhar, describes him as a passionate parliamentarian on topics he picks. Two topics clearly include technology and military.

Given his technology background, first in Intel and then in the telecom sector, Chandrasekhar has been a proponent of internet freedom. In 2015, when the Supreme Court struck down Section 66A, which punished people for posting offensive messages online, Chandrasekhar and his team is said to have played an active role in supporting it.

The other key issue he had taken up was military. In 2014, Chandrasekhar fought in the Supreme Court to give the Indian armed forces voting rights in the areas they were posted in. Interestingly, Chandrasekhar’s views on regulation of cryptocurrencies like bitcoins instead of banning.

However, he is not free from controversies. Before Chandrasekhar sold his BPL Mobile stake, his father-in-law TPG Nambiar took him to court for mismanagement of the company and discrepancies in the shareholding pattern in 2004 and filed a petition to restrain Chandrasekhar from selling or transferring BPL Mobiles without his consent. He also had a stake in Arnab Goswami’s Republic TV. However, in 2019, Chandrasekhar diluted its shareholding making Goswami a majority shareholder.

Controversies apart, according to people who have worked with him, Chandrasekhar is an apt person to help Prime Minister’s Narendra Modi’s vision of digital India.