IIT, Wharton Alum Ashwini Vaishnaw Is Minister For Railways, Technology

BJP Rajya Sabha MP from Odisha, Ashwini Vaishnaw, is the new Railways Minister and will head the Ministries of Communications, and Electronics and Information Technology Information as well, the government announced on Wednesday.

"A former IAS Officer of the 1994 batch, he handled important responsibilities over 15 years and was particularly known for his contribution to the PPP (public-private partnership) framework in Infrastructure," the government said in a note.

"Post that, he has held leadership roles across major global companies such as General Electric and Siemens," it said.

"He has a MBA from Wharton School, Pennsylvania University and M.Tech from IIT Kanpur," it added.

The 50-year-old's appointment comes following the particularly surprising exit of Ravi Shankar Prasad, one of the government's loudest defenders, who was locked in a bitter dispute with foreign social media companies over a new law.

He authored a controversial law that required social media firms to remove and identify the "first originator" of posts deemed to undermine India's sovereignty, state security or public order.

Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Rajya Sabha MP from Odisha, has been given charge of the Railways and IT ministry.

Social media companies and privacy activists fear the vagueness of the rules means they could be forced to identify the authors of posts critical of the government.

WhatsApp is challenging the rules in court over user privacy violation.

But the war of words has been sharpest with Twitter, with the microblogging site failing to appoint a permanent compliance officer based in India.

Mr Prasad has several times publicly slammed Twitter for not following the new rules, and undermining Indian laws.

His ministry recently told a court that the social media platform does not enjoy intermediatory status in India, making the company criminally liable for content posted on the platform.

This follows police visits to Twitter's India office in May after the firm labelled tweets by the BJP's national spokesman as "manipulated media".

Twitter responded by accusing the government of "intimidation tactics".