Srinagar, May 31 (KNS): The new faces were inducted in the Modi 2.0 Cabinet while as former finance minister and former Minister of External Affairs were dropped from the new cabinet due to their health issues.
Jaitley had urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi not to include him in the new cabinet due to his health issues.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah was inducted in the new cabinet. He will be the new Home Minister while the former Home Minister Rajnath Singh will be holding the charge of Defence Ministry. Former Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will now be the new Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs while as Anurag Thakur will be his deputy.
Another fresh inductee is a former foreign secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar who will be holding the charge of Ministry of External Affairs.
Reportedly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will retain the Department of Personnel and Training, Atomic Energy and Space as well as all important policy issues and portfolios not allocated.
Smriti Irani will be new Women and Child Development minister along with Textile ministry while as Nitin Gadkari will continue to be the minister for Road Transport and Highways. He will also hold the charge of Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises. Piyush Goyal will hold the charge of Commerce and Industry ministry in addition to his old charge of Railways.
Pralhad Joshi, a new inductee in Modi 2.0 cabinet will be new Minister, minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Mines and Coal while Ravi Shankar Prasad will continue as minister of Law and Information Technology and Telecom.
A new Ministry of Jal Shakti has been created and Gajendra Singh Shekhawat will be its minister. Ujjwala-man Dharmendra Pradhan will to continue with his previous ministry of Petroleum portfolio and has also been given charge of the Steel ministry.
Ramesh Pokhariyal 'Nishank' is the new Human Resource Development minister while Bihar ally and Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) chief Ram Vilas Paswam remains Consumer Affairs minister.
Narendra Singh Tomar has been given ministries of Agriculture and Rural Development and Panchayati Raj while Prakash Javadekar has been given ministries of Information and Broadcasting as well as Environment.
D V Sadananda Gowda will be the minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers and Narendra Singh Tomar will be the new minister of Agriculture and Rural Development.
Harsimrat Kaur Badal will continue to be the minister of Food Processing Industries, Thawar Chand Gehlot will be new minister of Social Justice and Empowerment while as former diplomat Hardeep Puri will be new minister of state with Independent charge of Civil Aviation while former IAS bureaucrat R K Singh will retain the ministries of Power and Renewable Energy in the same capacity.
Santosh Kumar Gangwar will be MoS with Independent charge for Labour and Employment.
Meanwhile, National Conference (NC) leader and former chief minister Omar Abdullah congratulated newly sworn in Union Council of ministers led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“Congratulations to all the ministers who were administered oath of office this evening. Best wishes as you begin a new term serving the citizens of our country,” Abdullah tweeted.
He said it was a pity that health issues had kept former Ministers including Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley out of the Cabinet. “It’s a pity to not see people like @arunjaitley & @SushmaSwaraj among the ministers today. I wish them both well as they deal with the health issues that have kept them out of union cabinet,” he said. (KNS)