Prime Minister Narendra Modi inducted 36 people into his cabinet on Wednesday.
Modi now has 77 ministers, nearly half of them new. Anurag Thakur and Hardeep Puri were among 15 new cabinet inductees. Sarbananda Sonowal, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Narayan Rane, Bhupender Yadav and Ashwini Vaishnaw were also sworn in.
IT and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan and Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar were among those who resigned.
Vardhan headed the health ministry at a time when the second wave of COVID engulfed the nation. Javadekar was among the chief spokespersons of the government. Ravi Shankar Prasad was seen to be in Modi’s core team who was dispatched to explain the government’s new policies – especially the controversial new social media regulations.
The big four portfolios – home, defence, external affairs and finance – were unaffected.
Uttar Pradesh crucial for BJP
The BJP is once again attempting social engineering in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, which is going to the polls next year. In the 2017 assembly election, the BJP sprung a surprise by winning an absolute majority – in the wake of botched up demonetisation. The party managed this feat by social engineering in which it managed to co-opt non-Jatav Dalits, non-Yadav backwards and several sections of Other Backward Communities that were feeling neglected. If today’s reshuffle is any indication, the party intends to repeat the formula with improvements.
Seven ministers from Uttar Pradesh were sworn, all picked with an eye on the Assembly polls due in 201. Of the seven newly inducted ministers from UP, Anupriya Patel heads BJP ally Apna Dal (Sonelal) and was a minister in the first Narendra Modi government. The rest are from the BJP. Anupriya Patel, Pankaj Choudhary and B L Verma are from the Other Backward Classes, which BJP leader in UP say make up 50 per cent of voters in the state. Three others — Kaushal Kishore, Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma and S P Singh Baghel — are from the Scheduled Castes category. Ajay Kumar is the lone Brahmin in this batch of ministers from the state.
Here is the list of new ministers who took oath today:
1. Narayan Rane
2. Sarbananda Sonowal
3. Dr. Virendra Kumar
4. Jyotiraditya M Scindia
5. Ramchandra Prasad Singh
6. Ashwini Vaishnaw
7. Pashupati Paras
8. Kiren Rijiju
9. Raj Kumar Singh
10. Hardeep Singh Puri
11. Mansukh Mandaviya
12. Bhupender Yadav
13. Parshottam Rupala
14. G. Kishan Reddy
15. Anurag Singh Thakur
16. Pankaj Choudhary
17. Anupriya Singh Patel
18. Dr Satya Pal Singh Baghel
19. Rajeev Chandrasekhar
20. Shobha Karandlaje
21.Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma
22. Darshana Vikram Jardosh
23. Meenakshi Lekhi
24. Annapurna Devi
25.A. Narayanaswamy
26. Kaushal Kishore
27. Ajay Bhatt
28. B. L. Verma
29. Ajay Kumar
30. Chauhan Devusinh
31. Bhagwanth Khuba
32. Kapil Moreshwar Patil
33. Pratima Bhoumik
34. Dr Subhas Sarkar
35 Dr Bhagwat Kishanrao Karad
36. Dr Rajkumar Ranjan Singh
37. D. Bharati Pravin Pawar
38. Bishweswar Tudu
39. Shantanu Thakur
40. Dr Munjapara Mahendrabhai
41. John Barla
42. Dr L. Murugan
43. Nisith Pramanik