Ram Vilas Paswan (5 July 1946 – 8 October 2020)[3] was an Indian politician from Bihar and the Cabinet Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution in the first and second Modi ministries.

[4] He started his political career as member of Samyukta Socialist Party and was elected to the Bihar Legislative Assembly in 1969.

[10][11] Paswan held Bachelor of Laws and Master of Arts degrees from Kosi College, Khagaria and Patna University.

[16] In 1974, as an ardent follower of Raj Narain and Jayaprakash Narayan Paswan became the general secretary of the Lok Dal.

He was personally close to the prominent leaders of anti-emergency like Raj Narain, Karpoori Thakur and Satyendra Narayan Sinha.

[20] Paswan was elected to the 9th Lok Sabha in 1989 and was appointed Union Minister of Labour and Welfare in the Vishwanath Pratap Singh government.

[21] Thereafter, Paswan was the Union Communications Minister from October 1999 to September 2001 when he was shifted to the Coal Ministry, the portfolio he held till April 2002.

However, Paswan consistently refused to support either Lalu Prasad Yadav, whom he accused of being extremely corrupt, or the right-wing National Democratic Alliance thereby creating a stalemate.

[24] This stalemate was broken when Nitish Kumar succeeded in persuading 12 members of Paswan's party to defect; to prevent the formation of a government supported by LJP defectors, the Governor of Bihar, Buta Singh dissolved the state legislature and called for fresh elections, keeping Bihar under President's Rule.

[25] In the November 2005 Bihar state elections, Paswan's third-alliance was utterly devastated; the Laloo Yadav-Congress alliance reduced to a minority and the NDA formed the new government.

[26] Paswan has declared that the Bihar state elections have no influence on the Central Government, which will continue with both him and Laloo Yadav as ministers.

[28] Paswan lost the elections from Hajipur to the Janata Dal's Ram Sundar Das, a former chief minister of Bihar for the first time in 33 years.

Of the six seats that the LJP won in 2019, three were from his family – son Chirag, and brothers Pashupati Kumar Paras and Ram Chandra Paswan.

His body was brought to Janardan Ghat in the Digha locality from his residence in Shri Krishna Puri, about 3 km away, for the last rites.

Also, senior leader and former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh Yadav paid tribute to him.