Rajendra Darda

Rajendra Jawaharlal Darda was a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from the Aurangabad East constituency and was a Cabinet Minister for Education, Government of Maharashtra in India.

After graduating from Nagpur University, Darda received his diploma from the Government Institute of Printing Technology, Mumbai. Darda also attended a two-year advanced course in Graphic Arts from the London College of Printing

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Darda is Vice Chairman and Joint Managing Director of the Lokmat newspaper group. The Dainik Lokmat is the fourth largest daily newspaper. with a circulation of 18,56,000. Lokmat also runs a Marathi news channel called IBN-Lokmat in partnership with CNN-IBN.

Darda had also taught journalism courses at Nagpur University.

Politics

In 1997 Darda joined the Congress party and in 1999 was elected a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from Aurangabad (west), Maharashtra. Darda then became the state Minister for Energy, Finance and Planning, and later the Minister of State for Home. He was re-elected to Maharashtra Legislative Assembly from Aurangabad (West) constituency in October 2004 and again in 2009. He then became the Minister for Industries in the newly constituted Cabinet of Maharashtra Government in November 2009. Currently he is a cabinet minister for scholastic education. In the past few months, verification of the student enrollment was carried out across the state funded schools by his instructions. Those revealed fake numbers of registered students for which he asserted to take stringent actions such as launching police case against the institutional bodies.

Rajendra Darda has also been named in a FIR by the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) for having a share in a company which is named in an infamous Coal scam. In this controversy his brother Vijay Darda is also named along with him.

Darda has two sons Karan and Rishi, and a brother Vijay Jawaharlal Darda who is Chairman of Lokmat and has served 3 times as an MP.

He is married to Ashoo Darda, who is the chairperson of Lokmat Sakhi Manch.