Smriti Irani to Dharmendra Pradhan: BJP’s education ministers and their tenures

5 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Jul 25, 2026 08:06 PM IST (From left) Smriti Irani, Prakash Javadekar, and Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank'.Over its 12 years in power, the NDA government has had four Education Ministers — only one of whom served for more than three years. That was Dharmendra Pradhan, who resigned on Saturday (July 25) after more than a month of protests over multiple exam paper leaks. Pradhan served a tenure of around five years. His predecessors had much shorter tenures — Smriti Irani was in office for around two years; Prakash Javadekar served for two years and 10 months until the end of the first Narendra Modi government; and Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ served around two years until mid-2021.During his lengthy stint in office, Pradhan defended the National Education Policy (NEP),