Who is India’s new education minister Pralhad Joshi?

Joshi has been a member of the cabinet since 2019 and is seen as close to powerful PM Modi.

Pralhad Joshi has been appointed as India’s education minister after weeks-long protests over an exam leak scandal led to the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan.

Pradhan’s departure, which came on Saturday, was one of the main demands of the youth-led demonstrations that in recent weeks had spread across India into a major challenge for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

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The 63-year-old Joshi is already the minister of new and renewable energy and consumer affairs, food and public distribution but will now also handle the education portfolio, a task political analysts said is likely to prove challenging amid increased scrutiny over the education system.

As one of the Modi government’s longest serving ministers, Joshi is seen as close to the powerful prime minister.

After being appointed to lead the Ministry of Education, Joshi wrote on social media that he was “grateful” to Modi “for placing his faith” in him and “entrusting” him with responsibility.

“I accept it with humility and a deep sense of duty,” he said.

Who is Joshi?

Joshi was born in 1962 in Bijapur in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in arts from the KS Arts College, Hubballi, which is affiliated with Karnataka University.

He cofounded a chemicals business after graduation. However, he was interested in politics from a young age and associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu volunteer organisation founded in 1925 by physician and Hindu nationalist Keshav Baliram Hedgewar in Nagpur in modern-day Maharashtra.

The RSS is often described as the ideological mother of the BJP.

Joshi’s political career officially began in the early 1990s during the Hubballi Idgah Maidan issue, a major political and religious conflict in Karnataka primarily centred on land usage by Muslims and Hindus, during which the BJP and RSS also demanded the Indian national flag be flown on the disputed land.

In 2004, Joshi was appointed as a BJP member of parliament from the Dharwad district. He  has since won five straight parliamentary elections.

Rise in the BJP

In 1998, Joshi was appointed president of the BJP in the Dharwad district and in 2014 rose to become the state of Karnataka’s BJP president.

In May 2019, he was appointed to Modi’s cabinet as minister of parliamentary affairs, coal and mines. In 2024, Joshi introduced several reforms to increase production of coal to meet growing energy demands.

He faced criticism from climate activists and local communities for championing coal production amid climate change concerns. In 2025, he became minister of new and renewable energy and consumer affairs, food and public distribution.

According to the government, this portfolio involves “working towards a cleaner and sustainable future of the country, achieving 500 GW through renewable energy and non-fossil energy sources by 2030 and net-zero target by 2070, which are essential for India’s economic development and national security”.

Challenges ahead?

One of the key challenges Joshi will face is addressing the concerns young people in India have about the education system, especially after a scandal involving the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), one of the world’s largest medical entrance examinations.

NEET scores determine whether aspiring doctors are eligible to join undergraduate medical colleges and, if so, which schools they qualify for.

Nearly 2.3 million test takers across India as well as at examination centres in Doha, Dubai, Singapore and Kathmandu, appeared for the NEET this year on May 3, battling it out for fewer than 130,000 spots in medical colleges.

After allegations of a leak of the examination paper, the Indian government announced on May 12 that the examination was voided, and another test would be held.

Disillusioned and frustrated, thousands of students protested.

On Sunday, Joshi held his first meeting as education minister to assess the situation and implement new schemes.