Jamshaid Ashraf – Today

Jamshaid Ashraf is an ex-Minister, having held the portfolios of Excise and of Registration, as well as the ex-Chairman of the Hajj Committee in Bihar. He is currently a member of the BJP party. He joined BJP in 2014, strongly believing that the other parties contesting solely on the basis of secularism were the least secular of all parties, and used secularism as nothing more than a marketing gimmick. He strongly believes BJP, under Mr. Narendra Modi’s leadership, is the best party for India’s development, and that through development lies the potential for true integration and secularism.

 

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Political Background

Jamshaid Ashraf is an ex-Minister from the State of Bihar. He held the post of Minister of Excise and Minister of Registration from 2008 to 2010 with JDU. He was also the Chairman of the Hajj Committee from 2006 to 2008, and was unanimously re-elected to the post again from 2008 to 2010. In 2010, Jamshaid resigned from his post as a Minister, and as an MLA, as a stand against the rampant corruption that was prevalent in the department, and inaction from the then Chief Minister, Mr. Nitish Kumar, who discouraged raising a voice against the corruption.

After setting up a successful business, Jamshaid had entered the field of politics to give back to the State that he called home. In 2005, he entered politics, contesting from Balia, Begusarai, and won by 18,000 votes by defeating the then Urban Development Minister, Mr. Shreenarayan Yadav.

In 2006, he became the Chairman of the Bihar State Hajj Committee, for which he was elected unanimously. His unceasing hard work for the Hajis and the massive improvements he brought about led to his unanimous re-election again in 2008 for this post.

In 2008, he was made a State Minister with Independent Charge of 2 portfolios – Registration and Excise. With his background in business of getting things done and leading to development, within 2 years he increased the revenue in Registration from Rs. 250 crores to Rs. 900 crores, and the process of registration was streamlined, making it easier for the public. Franking machines were introduced, as was e-registration for online registration, making the entire process much quicker and simpler, and cutting down on possibilities of corruption. All the district registration offices were also computerised, which was a vast improvement from the initial manual procedures employed previously.

Similarly, in the Excise department, he increased the revenues from Rs. 223 crores to Rs. 1,000 crores. However, based on studies he had conducted, according to the level of consumption in Bihar, the revenue should have been closer to Rs. 4,000 crores. This led to him finding out about massive levels of corruption, right from the district level to the Beverage Corporation – every town, every depot seemed to be involved in it. When he initially questioned this and raised his voice against it, he was told that this was the way things had been for ages, and there was no sense in disturbing how things worked. He was even offered a huge sum of money to let things work smoothly the way they were working and that he should profit from it. But he’d entered politics to give back to society, not to take from it, and so stood strongly against corruption.

Not willing to keep quiet about it and be complicit in the scam, he raised his voice against it, and wrote a detailed letter to the then CM, Mr. Nitish Kumar. The reply was very disappointing, so he wrote another letter, raising the issue again and asking for action to stop this corruption. When he saw no help forthcoming, he had no option but to resign from his post, as turning a blind eye to corruption went against everything he stood for. He is the only Muslim Minister in the entire country to have ever given up 2 portfolios and resigned from his post to take a strong stance against corruption.

At that point in time, people of Bihar were confused by his allegations on Mr. Nitish Kumar, because the perception of Mr. Kumar was so clean that it was hard for the people to believe that he could be involved in corruption.

But now, as the truth has been revealed, people can finally see the truth for themselves. Jamshaid dared to raise his voice back when Mr. Nitish Kumar had absolute power and control, and no one else dared to say anything. And today, Jamshaid’s voice stands as strong as ever, and is backed by a thousand more voices highlighting that indeed Mr. Nitish Kumar’s government had been no better than Mr. Lalu Prasad’s government before him when it came to corruption. There were a few IAS bureaucrats who were corrupt, and these were the ones that were taken in the inner circle by Mr. Nitish Kumar’s government, while many of the honest IAS bureaucrats were sidelined. These few corrupt bureaucrats helped entrench the corruption at all levels. The corruption today is prevalent from the smallest levels to the highest levels – and Bihar’s growth story has also proven to be just a media hype, with false stories and numbers propagated by Mr. Nitish Kumar to the media and the people.

This is why Jamshaid Ashraf has now joined BJP, which stands against corruption and promises to take India forward into a new era of development and progress, under the leadership and vision of Mr. Narendra Modi.

Personal Background

Jamshaid was born in 1954 in Begusarai, Bihar. He studied at St. Michael’s High School, Patna and C.M. College, Darbhanga, before heading to Kerela to get his degree in aeronautical engineering.

He then joined Air India Engineering Department and travelled across the world getting international exposure at an early age. After working with Air India in Bombay for 9 years, he took the risk of venturing into setting up his own business. His first venture was into film distribution, but it wasn’t very successful. Not deterred by this failure, he then set up another business into Construction, and slowly started doing well in this.

Unfortunately, in the 1992 riots in Bombay, his office was burnt down, and he lost all the papers and official property he possessed. Most people would have given up and gone back to working in a job, or back to their original home, but Jamshaid Ashraf was not a quitter – he didn’t know the meaning of giving up. He took this as a challenge, and pushed on.

He entered into a whole new line of business – container storage and repairing near the New Bombay shipping port, and slowly built this business up with his hard work and dedication from a small startup with 10 employees in 1993, to a large group of businesses today employing over 3,000 people with divisions in Port Management, Container Handling, Garments and Apparels and Hotels.

After his success in business, Jamshaid wanted to give back to the place he has always called home and help the people there where his roots are from. This motivated him to join politics.

Jamshaid is a family man. He’s been married for 32 years to Tahera Ashraf, and together they have raised 2 sons – Shariq and Shayan. Shariq did his undergrad from Singapore Management University, and then graduated with an MBA from Oxford. He worked with BCG in Melbourne, Australia until 2013. Shayan graduated from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. They’re both back in Bombay with the family, helping out with the family business and setting up new businesses, so Jamshaid has more time to dedicate to his passion – helping the people and the State of Bihar.