Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi

Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi (1 September 1924 – 11 January 2021) was an Indian independence activist and politician from Nawada district in the state of Bihar. He was elected to the Bihar Legislative Assembly for two terms and he was a Member of the Bihar Legislative Council for one term. He joined the Communist Party in 1942 and went on to become the State Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) as well as a member of its national Central Committee. He went to jail multiple times for a total of six years both before Independence and after due to his political participation.

When Vidyarthi was 17 he joined the freedom movement. In 1942, he joined the (undivided) Communist Party, even though some members in his family were in the Congress. In that very year, following the Quit India Movement, he was imprisoned for a year. Vidyarthi was in jail for three years during this time, only to be released in 1951. Vidyarthi, recalling those decades in a 2015 Times of India interview, said that most candidates would campaign by walking with a loudspeaker or mount it onto a bicycle, while richer candidates would travel on bullock carts and the star campaigners would travel by car. Vidyarthi was also outspoken about the changes in the election campaigning process, "the voters used to donate money, grain and vegetables to run the campaign... Now candidates give money to voters." In the 1962 Bihar election he was the runner up from Rajauli. In the 1967 Bihar election he stood from Nawada and came third with 14602 votes or 27.22% of the vote share. In 1969 he was the runner up in Nawada. The 1960s were also the period when the Communist Party of India split due to internal ideological differences. Vidyarthi decided to go with the CPI(M). He was a member of Bihar Legislative Council from 1990 to 1996.

His involvement with politics continued till he was a nonagenarian. In 2017, he along with comrades welcomed the Kisan Mukti Yatra (Farmer Freedom Journey) to Nawada district at the Bihar Jharkhand border with red flags. His speech was recorded in a diary entry: