Pramod Mahajan

Pramod Venkatesh Mahajan (30 October 1949 – 3 May 2006) was an Indian politician from Maharashtra.

A second-generation leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he belonged to a group of relatively young "technocratic" leaders.

At the time of his death, he was in a power struggle for the leadership of the BJP, given the imminent retirement of its aging top brass.

He was a member of the Rajya Sabha and a General Secretary of his party.

He contested only two Lok Sabha elections from Mumbai – North East constituency.

Mahajan was a member of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) since childhood, but he actively got involved when he worked as a sub-editor of its Marathi Newspaper, Tarun Bharat in 1970 and 1971.

He worked as an English teacher at the Kholeshwar College in Ambejogai between 1971 and 1974 before joining active politics during the emergency.

His love for theatre brought him close to Rekha Hamine, whom he courted and married on 11 March 1972.

They have two children, daughter Poonam and son Rahul Mahajan.

Both his children are trained pilots.

His daughter is married to Anand Rao Vajendla, an industrialist from Hyderabad.

He quit his job as a school teacher and became a full-time RSS pracharak in 1974.

He took part in the agitation against the state of emergency imposed by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and was incarcerated in the Nashik central jail until it was lifted.

Mahajan came to play a vital role during the coalition era of the late 1980s.

Between 1983 and 1985, he was also the All India Secretary of his party.

After unsuccessfully contesting the 1984 Lok Sabha elections, he became the president of the All India Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha in 1986, a position he held again between 1990 and 1992.

By virtue of his organizational skills and hard work, he rose to a prominent position, first in the Maharashtra state BJP and then at the national level.

Mahajan's aspirations were always national, but he also did a significant amount of work in building up his party's fortunes in his home state of Maharashtra.

In this, he was partnered with his childhood friend-turned brother-in-law Gopinath Munde (who is married to his sister Pradnya).

Mahajan was responsible for his party's alliance with the Shiv Sena.

He was one of the select batch of RSS workers co-opted into the BJP and was the general secretary of the party's state unit till 1985.

He rose to national prominence when he helped organize BJP President Lal Krishna Advani's Ram Rath Yatra in 1990.

Despite being credited with responsibility for his party's numerous election victories, Mahajan rarely contested or won popular elections himself.

The alliance went on to win the state assembly elections in 1995 and ruled till 1999.

Munde was the deputy chief minister in that government.

He won in 1996 but lost in 1998.

As Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's telecommunications minister between 2001 and 2003, he played a major role in India's cellular revolution.

He was widely seen as a successful Parliamentary Affairs minister due to his good relations with members of political parties across the ideological spectrum.

On 22 April 2006, he was shot by his brother Pravin Mahajan over a family dispute.

He succumbed to his injury 13 days later.

Pravin was sentenced to lifetime imprisonment by the court in 2007.

Pramod Mahajan was born to Venkatesh Devidas Mahajan and Prabhavati Venkatesh Mahajan in Mahbubnagar, Telangana, India in a Deshastha Brahmin family.

The Mahajan family had migrated from their home in Mahajan gully in Dharashiv to Ambajogai and were staying in a rented house in Mangalwar Peth.

Mahajan spent his childhood in Ambejogai.

He was the second child of his parents, with two brothers Prakash and Pravin, and two sisters Pratibha and Pradnya.

His father died when he was 21.

He attended Yogeshwari Vidyalaya and Mahavidyalaya in Beed district of Maharashtra and studied at the Ranade Institute for Journalism, Pune.

He obtained bachelor's degrees in Physics and Journalism and a post graduate degree in Political Science.

He with Gopinath Munde studied in Swami Ramanand Teerth College, Ambajogai, Maharashtra.

He passed Maharashtra Certified Typewriting from former Mahajan Typewriting Institute, Ambajogai.