Rameshwar Prasad is an India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

n politician, belonging to the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation

Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation

Communist Party of India Liberation is a communist political party in India.Communist Party of India was formed in 1969 by the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries, who had split from Communist Party of India in 1967...

. He is a Central Committee

Central Committee

Central Committee was the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, whether ruling or non-ruling in the twentieth century and of the surviving, mostly Trotskyist, states in the early twenty first. In such party organizations the...

 member of CPI(ML)Liberation and the president of All India Agricultural Labourers Association (AIALA).

Member of Parliament

Rameshwar Prasad hails from a Nonia (Dalit

Dalit

Dalit is a designation for a group of people traditionally regarded as Untouchable. Dalits are a mixed population, consisting of numerous castes from all over South Asia; they speak a variety of languages and practice a multitude of religions...

) family and is the son of a brick-kiln worker. Prasad dropped out of school in 1979, to become a full-time activist of the party. He was elected

Indian general election, 1989

General elections were held in India in 1989 to elect the members of the 9th Lok Sabha. The result was a loss for the Indian National Congress and Rajiv Gandhi, because all the opposition parties formed together a minority government under V. P. Singh and the National Front...

 to the Lok Sabha

Lok Sabha

The Lok Sabha or House of the People is the lower house of the Parliament of India. Members of the Lok Sabha are elected by direct election under universal adult suffrage. As of 2009, there have been fifteen Lok Sabhas elected by the people of India...

, the lower house of the Indian national parliament, in 1989 as the Indian People's Front

Indian People's Front

The Indian People's Front was a political organisation in India, active between 1982 and 1994. It functioned as an open, mass front of the Communist Party of India Liberation, and contested national and state elections....

 candidate from the Arrah constituency

Arrah (Lok Sabha constituency)

Arrah Lok Sabha constituency is one of the 40 Lok Sabha constituencies in Bihar state in eastern India.Arrah Lok Sabha constituency comprises the following seven Vidhan Sabha segments: Sandesh, Barhara, Arrah, Agiaon, Tarari, Jagdishpurand Shahpur.-Members of Parliament:Following is the list of...

. Prasad obtained 178,211 votes. He became the first Naxalite

Naxalite

The word Naxal, Naxalite or Naksalvadi is a generic term used to refer to various militant Communist groups operating in different parts of India under different organizational envelopes...

 Member of Parliament from Bihar

Bihar

Bihar is a state in eastern India. It is the 12th largest state in terms of geographical size at and 3rd largest by population. Almost 58% of Biharis are below the age of 25, which is the highest proportion in India....

. His election slogan was har mazdur ko roziroti, har dalit ko man; har kisan ko khet-pani, har yuvak ko kam ('Daily bread for every worker, dignity for every Dalit, water and land for every farmer, employment for every youth').

Prasad lost his parliamentary seat in the 1991 Lok Sabha election

Indian general election, 1991

General elections were held in India in 1991 to elect the members of the 10th Lok Sabha. The result of the election was that no party could get a majority, so a minority government was formed, resulting in a stable government for the next 5 years, under the new Prime Minister P.V...

, again standing as an Indian People's Front candidate. His vote had dropped to 117,262 (17.17%, finishing in third place).

Assembly Member

He won the Sandesh seat with 36,760 votes (34.23%), as a CPI(ML)Liberation candidate, in the 1995 Bihar legislative assembly election. Prasad lost the seat the 2000 election, finishing third with 28,776 votes (25.21%).

Prasad came third in the Arrah seat in the 1996 Lok Sabha election

Indian general election, 1996

General elections were held in India in 1996 to elect the members of the 11th Lok Sabha. The result of the election was a hung parliament, which would see three Prime Ministers in two years and force the country back to the polls in 1998. The United Front, was created and got support from 332...

, with 146,398 votes (22.97%). He contested the Arrah Lok Sabha seat again in the 1999 election

Indian general election, 1999

General Elections were held in India from September 5 to October 3, 1999, a few months after the Kargil War. The 13th Lok Sabha election is of historical importance as it was the first time a united front of parties managed to attain a majority and form a government that lasted a full term of five...

, again finishing third with 141,939 votes (20.82%).

2005 & 2006 elections

He again won the seat in the February 2005 legislative assembly election, with 33,834 votes (32.73%). However, he lost the seat in the October 2005 election, finishing in third position with 26,323 votes.

In 2006, CPI(ML)Liberation nominated Prasad to contest a by-poll for the Nalanda Lok Sabha seat

Nalanda (Lok Sabha constituency)

Nalanda Lok Sabha constituency is one of the 40 Lok Sabha constituencies in Bihar state in eastern India.-Assembly segments:Presently, Nalanda Lok Lok Sabha constituency comprises the following seven Vidhan Sabha segments:# Asthawan# Biharsharif# Rajgir# Islampur# Hilsa# Nalanda# Harnaut-Members...

. Prasad obtained 17,515 votes (5.62%)

2010 election

Rameshwar Prasad was the CPI(ML)Liberation candidate in Sandesh in the 2010 assembly election. But on October 19, 2010, he was arrested by police as he was filing his nomination papers. The case upon which the arrest is based dates back to 2000, when a violent confrontation had occurred at Arrah Collectorate in connection with a protest against a police killing of a CPI(ML)Liberation activist. Four CPI(ML)Liberation activists were killed. According to the CPI(ML)Liberation they had been killed in police firing, but that the local police had lodged criminal cases against the CPI(ML)Liberation leaders (including Prasad) as a retaliatory measure. His party strongly condemned the arrest of Prasad, labeling it 'illegal'.

Prasad finished in fourth place in the election, with 15,095 votes.