Chandrashekhar Yadav

Chandrashekhar Yadav is an Indian politician. He was Minister of Education in Government of Bihar & member of Bihar Legislative Assembly from Madhepura. He has been a member of the Bihar Legislative Assembly since 2010. Notably, he is recognized for his advocacy on behalf of farmers' rights, having played a significant role in establishing FCI (Food Corporation of India) centers in the Kosi and Madhepura regions in 1990s. These centers are particularly important due to agriculture being a primary source of income in these areas.

In 2005, he contested independently in the legislative assembly elections and secured the second position, trailing behind the JDU candidate and RJD was on third position. Subsequently, in 2010, he obtained the ticket from the RJD party and emerged victorious in the elections, marking his first win. Since then, he has achieved consecutive victories in subsequent elections. During the 2020 legislative assembly elections, he achieved a notable victory by prevailing over prominent leaders such as Rajesh Ranjan, also known as Pappu Yadav. Following the formation of the RJD-led government in August 2022,The Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar, and Deputy Chief Minister, Tejaswi Yadav, had given him the esteemed role and responsibility as the Education Minister of Bihar. He holds a respected leadership position in kosi-Simanchal, Bihar and enjoys widespread popularity among the people of Madhepura. He stood against the caste system and oppression of weaker sections of society, specifically called as Dalits in society. In order to counter the caste system he raised his voice against few paragraphs of Hindu mythology book "Ramcharitra Manas", which according him is oppressive against Dalits, and these paragraphs should be revised. This is the main reason behind his recent controversies. Earlier, he served as Minister of Disaster Management, Bihar in the span of year 2015-2017.Now, He is the Sugarcane Industries Department Minister From Jan. 2024.

Controversies
On 14 September 2023, Chandra Shekhar stirred a controversy as he compared the Hindu religious book Ramcharitmanas to potassium cyanide, a poisonous compound. He made the comments at an event on Hindi Diwas. "If you serve 56 kinds of good dishes and mix potassium cyanide into them(he referred some controversial paragraphs of Ramcharitra manas which is against backward and dalit castes), would you eat them? The same analogy applies to the Ramcharitramanas," he said. Shekhar’s party colleagues backed his statement saying that RJD party's ideology is of Social justice. However RJD's ally Janata Dal United (JDU) said that it disapproves of such comments.