With UP polls in mind, Modi reshuffles Cabinet. Here is the complete list

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