Harivansh Narayan Singh

Harivansh was born in Rajput family in Sitab Diara, the same village of Jayaprakash Narayan in Ballia district of Uttar Pradesh. He did his graduation and post-graduation in Economics from Banaras Hindu University and also holds a Diploma in Journalism. He resides at Ranchi.^[2][3]

He has worked in several different media publications through his career, starting with The Times of India. He served as an additional media advisor to former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar. He joined the then obscure and nearly dead Hindi publication Prabhat Khabar in 1989, and scaled it to become one of the top newspapers in India, in terms of circulation. The newspaper was known for investigating many high-profile stories, including the Fodder scam.^[4]

In 2014, the Janata Dal (United) nominated Singh to the Rajya Sabha from the state of Bihar for a six-year term.^[5] On 8 August 2018, he was elected as Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha for a six-year term as the candidate of the National Democratic Alliance, winning the election by a vote of 125 to 105 against the opposition candidate.^[6] He is the third person ever and first in forty years to hold this post who is not from the Indian National Congress. He was re-elected as the deputy chairman of the Rajya Sabha on 14 September 2020 after he returned to the Rajya Sabha for his second term from Bihar. Prior to the 2026 Rajya Sabha elections, Singh announced his retirement from the upper house and was not re-nominated by the Janata Dal (United). Nitish Kumar was announced as his successor in March 2026.^[7]

However, Singh was nominated as Member of Rajya Sabha by Droupadi Murmu from Journalism field in April 2026. He succeeded Ranjan Gogoi, former Chief Justice of India whose term ended in March 2026.^[8] He was re-elected as the Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha for the third term on 17 April 2026 unopposed. He became first person since 2004 after Najma Heptulla and first non-Congress person, re-elected for third time for the post. He is also the first Nominated member elected as Deputy Chairman.