Pradeep Kumar Majhi

Early life

He was born in a predominately tribal backward region village named Taliamba, Jharigam of District Nabarangpur area of Orissa to Bhagaban Majhi and Subarno Prasad Majhi. He did his 12th from the prestigious Buxi Jagabandhu Bidyadhar College Bhubaneswar and B.A graduation from Vikram Deb Autonomous College – Jeypore, Koraput . He went for Delhi for Advanced Diploma in Computer Application.

Political career

Majhi was studying law in Delhi when he got involved in highlighting the malnutrition deaths of children in Nabarangpur district in 2002. He had gone back to his district. Before joining in active politics Sri Majhi had established an organisation named Garib Sena whose sole aim was to expose the corruption around benefits meant for common deprived people at the village level. During that period he conducted massive agitation in Gram Panchayat levels and Block levels on the mismanagement of welfare schemes which were meant for rural people like rice and kerosene.

AICC Vice-President Rahul Gandhi discovered him under the Youth Congress 'Talent Search for Youth' conducted in Bhubaneswar where he stood first in the state level. Pradeep Majhi started his political career as elected President of Zilla Parishad from Nabarangpur.

Majhi is among the rising young leaders of National Congress party. He is very close to Rahul Gandhi, who is Party vice-president and also in charge of the Youth Congress affairs. Majhi from Orissa registered history, when he was appointed as the secretary of Indian Youth Congress. This is the first time a person from Orissa has been elevated to this post. While the UPA 2 government is all set to complete two years, prominent "Week' magazine came up with a detailed statistics that Congress MP from Nabarangpur, Mr Majhi has set a new record. The first-timer Lok Sabha MP asked 501 questions in two years with all-time records of 75 percentage of attendance in Parliament irrespective of his additional Orissa Youth Congress responsibilities.

Garib Sena organization

After returning from Delhi, in 2002 he started an called Garib Sena – whose prime aim was to monitor whether government schemes were properly used and reached the correct end users. Within a short time around 500 young people from Jharigam joined this new organization.

Garib Sena checked that the PDS System (Public Distribution System) was working effectively in providing rice, kerosene to the common people and also check that valid cards to BPL (Below Poverty Line) peoples were provided. He, with the help of local youths, visited DRDO and Block and collected information related to the total number of people benefited in these schemes, and also started visiting the local Panchayats and verifying whether those people were getting the benefit of these schemes.

He found that the villagers were completely unaware about these benefits; and that in many cases government representatives and Panchayat representatives were taking these benefits for themselves. Around 30% BPL cards are kept by Panchayat Secretary, Sarapanch, Panchayat Extension Officers. He contacted those villagers whose names were in BPL list but not aware of these schemes, and started laying complaints at local police stations against the Panchayat Secretary, Sarapanch, Panchayat Extension Officers.

Initially the Police were reluctant to accept complaints, but then he managed to create awareness among local villagers and forwarded these movements via Garib Sena towards other Blocks in |Nabarangpur] districts.

Dongiriguda malnutrition deaths

Garib Sena highlighted the malnutrition deaths of 11 children in the 0–5 age group in the space of a few weeks in June–July 2002 in THE Dongiriguda Adivasi settlement of Nabarangpur district, located in the reserve forest under Jharigaon block. Dongiriguda has remained outside the purview of numerous government schemes because it is a non-revenue village or one that exists within reserve forest limits. None of the families possesses a below poverty line (BPL) card because theirs is not a revenue village.

Jolted by media reports, government officials, who had never visited Dongiriguda before, made a beeline to the hamlet, treading the jungle path, to save their political masters much embarrassment.

Pradeep Majhi was instrumental in bringing this news to the national media and it created a great impact among public. In this movement had made the state CM many sleepless night.

President of Zilla Parishad

After successfully carried out the Garib Sena organisation in a district level, he was chosen by Congress party to contest the Zilla Parishad member candidate in year 2007. He was won by a huge margin and eventually elected as the President of Zilla Parishad of Nabarangpur in May'13 2007 at the age of 32.

Mr Majhi believes this Zilla Parishad a 3 Tier Panchayat System is a powerfil post. During his Two Year tenure (2007–2009) Mr Majhi given major emphasys in conducting regular meetings of PRI (Panchayat Raj Institution) members along with took major interest in implementing the Rajiv Gandhi Panchayat Raj Sangathan – RGPRS. He made lot of awareness not just a mere signing authority and took special interest in bringing all the Culprit who are allegedly involved in corruption in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act MGNREGA. In his tenure highest number cases and allegations were registered and sent to Vigilance team.

Other significant achievements were Backward Regions Grant Fund Programme (BRGF) were properly allocated to the proper beneficiary activities and highest Hector of Plantation of cashew (around 38K hectors) in records. He made it clear that Zilla Parishad institution should work in a transparent and effective manner.

Indian Youth Congress Secretary

In 2008 he was appointed as Secretary of Indian Youth Congress by AICC Vice-President and MP Rahul Gandhi and was made in-charge of Jharkhand state Young Congress. During that tenure of 1 year, he had toured maximum city and village areas of Jharkhand. Motivates the youth to be part of active politics which is a message of Rahul ji and emphasises the ground level lower carder workers to be part of mainstream of politics. He claims till date he still have same level of emotional attachment with youth congress workers of Jharkhand.

Orissa Youth Congress President

In Pradeep Majhi's stints as president of Orissa Youth Congress, he has attempted with his hard work and commitment to bring back the faith among young congress members when Orissa congress was going through a hard period. A huge number of fresh young bloods had been injected in party via talent hunt programs conducted across the state. He has dared the Orissa ruling Naveen Patnaik government over the huge Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act scam. He has also launched a Hunger strike near the state secretariat with his supporters seeking loan waiver for small and marginal farmers hit by nonseasonal rain. Then the hunger strike was called off after 7 days. On the sixth day of the stir six leaders including Majhi were shifted to the Capital Hospital there after their condition deteriorated. The Capital Hospital's Causality ward was crowded with many Congress leaders and workers to inquire about their health condition.

Orissa Youth Congress had advanced a lot under his leadership and guidance in terms of more discipline, more agitations and movements, infusion of ample fresh bloods in party carder and most significantly propagating Rahul ji's vision and message to youth across the state.

2009 Lok Sabha Elections

He was nominated by the Congress party to contest the Lok Sabha elections 2009 from Nabarangpur in Odisha. He won the 2009 Lok Sabha election by a margin of 30830 votes. During his tenure as a parliamentarian among others he played a decisive role in Food Corporation of India procuring maize at MSP from Nabarangpur farmers. He was also involved in the cause of Sugar Cane farmers in Baramba and Nayagarh.

Personal life

Pradeep Majhi is still single and has completely dedicated his life for the social service. At a personal front he is simple, honest, hard working, high on energy, mature political brinkmanship, easily approachable and sociable in nature. His calm and quiet demeanour is widely appreciated and recognised. His hobbies are like Driving, reading national and international news magazines and watching Hollywood and Bollywood action movies.

He has a special interest in Poverty eradication programme, proper utilisation of Water resources, Water management and awareness for health and against population explosion. Above all he is one of the tallest Adivasi Leaders of his country.

Foreign exposure

He has been to many countries like US, Australia, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Nepal, Pakistan, Germany, Sweden and Czech Republic.