Dharmendra Pradhan (born 26 June 1969) is an Indian politician of the Bharatiya Janata Party from Odisha and the Union Minister of Education since July 2021. As Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas from 2014 to 2021, the longest anyone has held that post, he ran the Ujjwala scheme that gave free cooking-gas connections to tens of millions of poor households. He represents Sambalpur in the Lok Sabha.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Dharmendra Debendra Pradhan |
| Born | 26 June 1969, Talcher, Angul district, Odisha, India |
| Age | 57 |
| Party | Bharatiya Janata Party |
| Offices | Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas (2014–2021); Minister of Education (2021–present) |
| Constituency | Sambalpur (Lok Sabha, since 2024) |
| Education | Talcher College; Utkal University, Bhubaneswar (M.A. Anthropology) |
| Father | Debendra Pradhan (former Union minister of state) |
| Spouse | Mridula Pradhan |
| Children | 2 |
Early Life
Pradhan was born in the coal town of Talcher. His father, Debendra Pradhan, a doctor, was a BJP member of the Lok Sabha and a minister of state in the Vajpayee government. Dharmendra joined the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad as a college student in 1983, was elected president of his college union and rose to be the organisation’s national secretary. He later led the party’s youth wing.
Political Career
He was elected to the Odisha assembly from Pallahara in 2000 and to the Lok Sabha from Deogarh in 2004. After losing in 2009 he worked in the party organisation as a general secretary in charge of several states, and entered the Rajya Sabha from Bihar in 2012 and from Madhya Pradesh in 2018.
Narendra Modi gave him independent charge of Petroleum in May 2014 and cabinet rank in 2017. He moved the cooking-gas subsidy to direct bank transfers, ran the “Give It Up” campaign asking better-off families to surrender their subsidy, and from May 2016 implemented the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, under which more than eight crore women from poor households received gas connections. Petrol and diesel prices were freed from government control in his term. He also held Skill Development and, from 2019, Steel.
Since 2021 he has been carrying out the National Education Policy of 2020, including four-year undergraduate degrees, a common university entrance test and teaching in Indian languages. His ministry faced strong criticism in 2024 over the leak of the NEET medical entrance paper and the cancellation of another national examination.
He was the BJP’s main strategist in Odisha, where the party defeated Naveen Patnaik‘s government in 2024, and he won Sambalpur that year.
Personal Life
He is married to Mridula, and they have a son and a daughter.
Frequently Asked Questions
When and where was Dharmendra Pradhan born?
Dharmendra Pradhan was born on 26 June 1969 in Talcher, Angul district, Odisha, India and is 57 years old.
Featured image: Dharmendra Pradhan (centre), then Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, addresses a press conference, Guwahati, 17 April 2015. Photo by Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, licensed under Government Open Data License – India, via Wikimedia Commons.
