New Delhi: Shripad Yesso Naik, a leader from Goa unit of Bharatiya Janaata Party (BJP) got the Independent Charge as the Minister of state in the Ministry of AYUSH. Along with that he has also got the charge as a Minister of State in the Ministry of Defence. Naik has served as a union minister in previous Modi government, too.
After initially serving as the Union Minister of State for Tourism, he was made Union Minister of State with Independent charge of the newly formed AYUSH Ministry. Naik had courted controversy after he had claimed that he had access to research that proved that cancer and related diseases could be cured through yoga.
Naik won the North Goa Lok Sabha seat and defeated his nearest Congress rival Girish Chodankar with a margin of over 80,000 votes. Naik and his party projected the Congress candidate as an "outsider" as he secured a fifth-consecutive victory.
He was first elected from Panaji in Goa in 1999 and served as a junior minister in the Vajpayee cabinet. He has held his seat since 2004, winning consecutive elections in 2004, 2009, 2014 and now 2019. In 2014 Lok Sabha elections, he won with a margin of 1,05,000 votes which is huge for a small state of Goa.
A businessman, Naik had started his political career as the General Secretary of the BJP in Goa. Naik is among the generation of leaders from Goa who had been groomed by the RSS and would rise to the position of party president in Goa. He is also a member of the Legislative Assembly in Goa.