Vijay Goel (born 4 January 1954) is an Indian politician and a former Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs and Statistic and Implementation in the NDA government. A former Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports, Goel is affiliated with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He became president of the Delhi unit of the BJP in February 2013.[2] He was elected to Rajya Sabha from Rajasthan in 2014.[3]
He is the former Delhi University Students' Union president and an alumnus of Shri Ram College of Commerce.[4][5] He has been the Member of Parliament for the 11th, 12th and 13th Lok Sabha representing the Sadar and Chandni Chowk constituencies of Delhi. He also served as the Union Minister of State of Labour, Parliamentary Affairs, Statistics & Programme Implementation and Youth Affairs & Sports in the National Democratic Alliance (India) government until 2004.
Early and personal life
Vijay Goel was born to former Delhi Vidhan Sabha Speaker and BJP member Charti Lal Goel[6] and Basanti Devi on 4 January 1954. He has an M.Com. degree from Shri Ram College of Commerce and a LL.B. degree from the University of Delhi.[7] He was a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and was jailed during Emergency in India.[8] After his release from jail, Goel became president of Delhi University Students' Union in 1977 as a candidate of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad.[7][6] He married Preeti Goel, a professor at the University of Delhi, on 8 March 1985. The couple have a son and a daughter.[9]
Goel was the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) treasurer in 1974–1975. He exposed corruption concerning fake certificates that was then operating at the university.[8]
Goel had been promoted as the BJP's candidate for Chief Minister in the 2013 Delhi Legislative Assembly election until six weeks prior to voting day. According to some source, the electoral threat posed by the recently formed Aam Aadmi Party caused him to be replaced by Harsh Vardhan.[12][13] Other sources say that he met with opposition from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, an organisation that is closely associated with the BJP and who were unhappy with how he was running the party in the state.[14]
He was elected to Rajya Sabha from Rajasthan in 2014.[7]
He remained the Minister of State for Youth Affairs & Sports from 5 July 2016 to 3 September 2017.[7] In his tenure, a dedicated portal was launched to search young, talented people in sports who otherwise go unnoticed.[15] The National Talent Search Portal[16] connects potential sportsperson to the Sports Authority of India (SAI) centres for training and better guidance. He became the minister of state for Parliamentary Affairs on 3 September 2017.[17]
Contributions
Under the banner of Lok Abhiyan, a socio-cultural organisation, Goel initiated protests against state-sponsored lotteries in India in 1993.[7] He led a campaign supported by over 120 MPs. The lottery was banned in India on 7 July 1998.[18]
Vijay Goel established The Toy Bank, a not for profit organisation, in 1987 that collects toys from donors, refurbishes/renews them and redistributes the toys amongst the underprivileged children in Delhi.[19]The Toy Bank was co-founded by his daughter Vidyun Goel.[20]
Goel has been actively involved in heritage conservation. As a Lok Sabha representative from Chandni Chowk, Goel hosted a two-day cultural festival "Chaudhvin Ka Chand" in 1998 to get the soul back into the 350-year-old city of Shahjahanabad and turn Chandni Chowk into a major tourist attraction in Delhi.[21] For this, among other measures, electricity polls were rooted out, pavements were cleared of encroachments, and shop shutters were painted to spruce up the locality before cultural festival.[22]
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