New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Narendra Modi was sworn in as prime minister for the third consecutive term by President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan in the Capital Sunday.
At the ceremony, Modi along with 71 ministers, including 30 cabinet ministers, 5 ministers of state (Independent charge) and 36 ministers of state (MoS) were sworn in on Sunday, making it one of the largest council of ministers that Modi has led since 2014, when he became the PM for the for the first time.
Outgoing Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, External Affairs Minister Jaishankar, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Roads And Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, Railways and Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, Shipping Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, and Environment, Forest and Climate Change and Labour and Employment Minister Bhupender Yadav, among others, have been retained in the cabinet.
BJP party president J.P. Nadda made an entry to the Cabinet after five years.
Of the 30 cabinet berths, five were given to BJP’s allies. These included H.D. Kumaraswamy from Janata Dal (Secular), Jitan Ram Manjhi from Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular), Rajiv Ranjan Singh from Janata Dal (United), Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu from Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Chirag Paswan from Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas).
In all, of the 71 ministers sworn in, 11 were from BJP’s allies. Of the 5 MoS (Independent charge), 2 were given to allies Shiv Sena and Rashtriya Lok Dal. Four MoS charges were also given to BJP’s allies.
The council of ministers will have 27 ministers belonging to Other Backward Class (OBC), 10 from Scheduled Caste (SC), 5 from Scheduled Tribe (ST) and 5 from minorities, including Sikh and Christian.
In an early sign of strain within the NDA, one of the coalition partners — the Nationalist Congress Party led by Ajit Pawar — has refused to accept the BJP’s offer of Minister of State (Independent) in the government. The party wanted a cabinet berth. The Ajit Pawar-led NCP won 1 of the 4 seats it contested.
The portfolios of the ministers are yet to be announced.
Also read: With NDA set to take oath for 3rd time, all eyes on big bureaucratic appointments of Modi 3.0
Many outgoing ministers retained in Modi 3.0
Apart from the inclusion of 11 MPs from its coalition partners, Modi has largely maintained continuity in his cabinet as far as BJP ministers are concerned, retaining most of them from the 2019 cabinet. Even most of the ministers of states have been retained in the council of ministers.
Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan, Bhupendra Yadav, Jyotiraditya Scindia — all Rajya Sabha members — have also been retained as ministers after contesting and winning their Lok Sabha seats.
Among the prominent new inclusions in the council of ministers are former Madhya Pradesh chief minister (CM) Shivraj Singh Chouhan, former Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar, Suresh Gopi, who won from Kerala, former Telangana BJP chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar, West Bengal BJP chief Sukanta Majumdar, and Ravneet Singh Bittu from Punjab. Bittu lost the election this time in Ludhiana. The BJP had gone solo in the state and could not win a single seat.
Though portfolios of the ministers are yet to be announced, sources said that BJP is likely to retain the top four ministries — home, defence, external affairs and finance — that are part of the important Cabinet Committee on Security.
From Odisha, where BJP almost routed the Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in Lok Sabha and is all set to form its first government in the state assembly, outgoing education minister Dharmendra Pradhan and former tribal affairs minister Jual Oram have been accommodated in the cabinet.
Two other high-profile MPs who won from the state — former IAS officer Aparajita Sarangi (Bhubaneshwar), and Sambit Patra (Puri) — have been left out from the council of ministers leading to speculations that they could be among the contenders for the CM’s post in the first BJP government in the state, which will be sworn in next week.
Among the notable BJP dropouts from the council of ministers include outgoing women and child development minister Smriti Irani and information and broadcasting minister Anurag Thakur. While Irani lost Amethi by a margin of over 1.6 lakh votes to Congress’s K.L. Sharma, Thakur had won by 1.8 lakh votes from Hamirpur.
The BJP has accommodated two MPs from West Bengal, where the party performed below its expectations, winning just 12 of the 42 seats. The Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress won 29 seats and the Congress, one. West Bengal BJP president Sukanta Majumdar and Shantanu Thakur were sworn in as MoS. Thakur was the outgoing MoS in the shipping ministry and was sworn in despite losing in the recent election.
Many first time MPs from Karnataka, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Delhi were also sworn in as ministers.
11 ministers from coalition partners
Two MPs from one of BJP’s largest allies, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) — Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu and Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani — were also sworn in as ministers Sunday. While Naidu was sworn in as a cabinet minister, Pemmasani was sworn in as MoS. The TDP, with 16 Lok Sabha seats in Andhra Pradesh, is one of the largest allies of the BJP.
Naidu, a three-time MP from Andhra Pradesh’s Srikakulam constituency is close to party supremo Chandrababu Naidu. One of the youngest MPs at 36, Naidu is the TDP’s national general secretary. He won by a huge margin of 3.2 lakh votes this time around.
Pemmasani (48) on the other hand is a first-time contestant who defeated YSRCP’s Kilari Venkata Rosaiah from Amaravati constituency by a margin of 3.4 lakh votes. A doctor by profession, he is one of the richest contestants in the country and comes from a family of TDP supporters.
From the JD(U), former party chief Rajiv Ranjan Singh took oath as a cabinet minister while Rajya Sabha MP Ram Nath Thakur took oath as MoS. Thakur, a two-time Rajya Sabha MP is the son of former Bihar CM and socialist leader Karpoori Thakur. Karpoori Thakur was awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously by the Modi government in February this year.
Chirag Paswan, whose Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) won five seats, was sworn in as cabinet minister. Prataprao Ganpatrao Jadhav of the Shiv Sena and Jayant Chaudhary of Rashtriya Lok Dal were also sworn in as MoS (Independent charge).
TDP and the JD(U) and LJP (RV) are among the BJP’s crucial allies, who have helped the NDA cross the majority figure of 272 in the Lok Sabha. The saffron party could get only 240 seats on its own in the 543 member Lok Sabha while the TDP won 16, the JD(U) 12 and Chirag Paswan’s LJS (RV) won 5 seats. This had left the BJP with no option but to allocate 11 ministerial posts to its allies. Together with its allies, NDA has 293 seats in the 543 member Lok Sabha, 27 more than the majority figure of 272.
The other MPs from the coalition who were sworn in as ministers include Apna Dal (Soneylal’s) Anupriya Patel and Republican Party of India’s Ramdas Athawale.
In the council of ministers there are 43 ministers who have served three terms or higher in Parliament while 39 have served as ministers in the Government of India before. There are also 6 former CMs and 34 MPs who have served in state legislatures.
Also read: How BJP engineered downfall of Naveen Patnaik after 2014 & broke BJD’s stranglehold on Odisha