Hours after 19 new ministers took their oath at the Rashtrapati Bhavan to join the Modi government, the portfolios of the new ministers have been announced. Smriti Irani has been replaced by Prakash Javadekar at the HRD Ministry, while the Textiles portfolio has been handed over to Irani.
Venkiah Naidu is the new Information and Broadcasting Minister, taking over from Arun Jaitley who was holding the portfolio along with the Finance Ministry. Naidu will continue holding the Urban Development ministry.
Ravi Shankar Prasad gets additional charge of Law ministry. MJ Akbar is the new MoS of External Affairs. Jayant Sinha is the new MoS Civil Aviation, he was previously the MoS for Finance.
DV Sadananda Gowda has been moved from Law to Statistics and Programme Implementation.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday carried out a major reshuffle of his council of ministers by inducting 19 new faces, elevating Minister of State for Environment Prakash Javadekar to the cabinet and dropping five junior ministers.
All the 19 new ministers sworn in at a solemn function at the Rashtrapati Bhavan are from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) barring RPI leader Ramdas Athawale of Maharashtra and Apna Dal's Anupriya Patel of Uttar Pradesh.
The ministers were sworn in by President Pranab Mukherjee in the presence of Vice President Hamid Ansari, Modi, BJP President Amit Shah and several union ministers including Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh and Nitin Gadkari.
BJP veteran L.K. Advani and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj missed the event but for different reasons.
The five Ministers of State who were dropped were Sanwar Lal Jat (Water Resources), Nihalchand (Panchayati Raj), Ram Shankar Katheria (HRD), Mansukh Bhai Vasava (Tribal Affairs) and Mohanbhai Kundaria (Agriculture).
The new Ministers of State are drawn from Uttar Pradesh, which will see assembly elections next year, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Karnataka, West Bengal and Assam, where a BJP government took office in May for the first time.
Delhi too got representation. Vijay Goel, although elected from Rajasthan to the Rajya Sabha, is a former BJP President in Delhi.
The new ministers are: Faggan Singh Kulaste, S.S. Ahluwalia, Ramesh Chandappa Jigajinagi, Vijay Goel, Ramdas Athawale, Rajen Gohain, Anil Madhav Dave, Parshottam Rupala, M.J. Akbar, Arjun Ram Meghwal, Jaswant Sinh Bhabhor, Mahendra Nath Pandey, Ajay Tamta, Krishna Raj, Mansukh Bhai Mandavia, Anupriya Patel, C.R. Chaudhary, P.P. Chaudhary and Subhas Ramrao Bhamre.
With agency inputs