Former Union Minister and Samajwadi Party leader Beni Prasad Verma passes away

Former Union Minister and veteran leader of the Samajwadi Party Beni Prasad Verma passed away on late Friday evening at the Medanta Hospital in Lucknow. Reports confirmed that the Rajya Sabha MP had been suffering from age-related illnesses for a while.

Verma, a founding member of the Samajwadi Party, had once been a close associate of Mulayam Singh Yadav, the founder-patron of the party. Verma had, however, had joined the Congress later and was elected on its ticket to the Lok Sabha in 2009, before returning to the SP in 2016.

Beni Prasad Verma had a short stint as the Union Communications Minister in Prime Minister Deve Gowda's cabinet from 1996-98. He was re-elected to the Lok Sabha in 1998, 1999 and 2004 from Kaiserganj Lok Sabha seat. In 2009, he was re-elected to the Lok Sabha from Gonda constituency in Uttar Pradesh state as a Congress candidate and on July-12-2011 was appointed the Steel Minister in Manmohan Singh Government.

He was also a prominent leader of the kurmi samaj, a Hindu cultivator caste in Northern India, being born into a kurmi family himself.