Modi 3.0: 34 ministers retain berth including 19 in Cabinet

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has retained 34 ministers from his outgoing council of ministers including as many as 19 with Cabinet berths.

The outgoing Cabinet ministers who took oath again on Sunday included Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Nirmala Sitharaman and S Jaishankar, reflecting the prime minister’s emphasis on continuity and experience in his third term.

Annapurna Devi is the only one to be promoted from Minister of State rank to Cabinet minister, while L Murugan is the only person from the last council of ministers to get a berth again despite having lost the Lok Sabha election. He is already a member of the Rajya Sabha.

Some ministers have been brought back after a gap, including BJP chief J P Nadda who served as a minister in Modi’s first term.

Jual Oram and Ajay Tamta were also ministers earlier and have returned after a gap.

Rajnath Singh: A lecturer, who later turned politician, has seen a long political innings from being a chief minister of Uttar Pradesh to the national president of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Before being a minister in two successive Modi governments, he has also been a road transport minister in the Atal Bihari government.

Singh has handled two key portfolios of Home and Defence in the Modi government and was Deputy Leader of the House in the 17th Lok Sabha which was dissolved earlier this month.

He won the just-held Lok Sabha elections from Lucknow by a margin of over 1.35 lakh votes.

Amit Shah: He has been an elected representative for the past 25 years – first as an MLA, then as a member of Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha.

A BJP national president for six years, he has been the Union home minister as well as minister for Cooperation, a new ministry formed by the government.

He retained the Gandhinagar seat in the parliamentary polls by a massive margin of over 7.44 lakh votes.

Nitin Gadkari: Closely associated with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh from early days, he is seen as a crusader for bio-fuels.

A former national president of the BJP, Gadkari became a Minister of the Public Works Department of Maharashtra in 1995.

Gadkari was elected to the 16th Sabha from Nagpur winning by an impressive margin. On May 26, 2014, he was sworn in as the Minister for Road Transport.

He retained the Nagpur seat in the recent parliamentary polls.

Nirmala Sitharaman: Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs and a Rajya Sabha MP representing Karnataka, she decided against contesting the Lok Sabha elections.

She was a national spokesperson of the BJP and became a Union minister holding the defence and later the finance portfolios.

S Jaishankar: A career diplomat who served as India’s envoy to Beijing and later rose to become the foreign secretary, he was the external affairs minister in the Modi 2.0 government. A Rajya Sabha member, he is the voice of New Delhi at international fora.

Piyush Goyal: He was Minister of Commerce and Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Textiles, and Leader of the House, Rajya Sabha in the Modi 2.0 government. He has previously helmed the Ministry of Railways, Finance, Corporate Affairs, Coal, Power, New & Renewable Energy, and Mines.

He made a successful foray in Lok Sabha polls by winning from the Mumbai North seat.

Dharmendra Pradhan: He served as Minister of Education and Minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and so far has been a Rajya Sabha member. He has entered Lok Sabha this time by winning from Sambhalpur in Odisha, a state where BJP has also won the assembly polls.

Pralhad Joshi: Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Coal and Mines in the Modi 2.0, he has returned to Lok Sabha by winning from Dharwad in Karnataka.

Leading from the front in the Lok Sabha, he was often seen taking on the opposition on various issues, including frequent disruptions.

Sarbananda Sonowal: A key BJP face from the Northeast, he won the Lok Sabha election from Dibrugarh in Assam.
He was the Minister for Ports, Shipping and Waterways and AYUSH. Before that, he was the chief minister of Assam. He fought the Lok Sabha polls while being a Rajya Sabha member. But it is his third time in the lower house.

Virendra Kumar: An eight-time Lok Sabha member, he was the pro-tem speaker in the 17th Lok Sabha tasked with the oath-taking of members as well as presiding over the election of Speaker.

He was a minister for Social Justice and Empowerment in the Modi 2.0 government.

Giriraj Singh: After a long stint in the Bihar assembly, he entered the 16th Lok Sabha and became a minister of state in the Modi government.

As a member of the last Lok Sabha, he became a Cabinet minister of the newly formed Ministry of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries. Later, he was shifted to the Rural Development ministry.

Jyotiraditya Scindia: He served as Minister of Civil Aviation and Steel in the second Modi government from 2021 after switching over from the Congress.

A sitting member of the Rajya Sabha, He won from the Guna seat in Madhya Pradesh.

Ashwini Vaishnaw: a member of Rajya Sabha representing Odisha since 2019, he was Railways and IT minister in the previous Modi government. A former bureaucrat, he also had a stint as an entrepreneur.

Kiren Rijiju: He returned to Lok Sabha by retaining the Arunachal (West) constituency. Earlier a junior minister in the home ministry and later the Union law minister, Rijiju was Minister for Earth Sciences in Modi 2.0.

He was known for taking on the Judiciary on various issues, including the collegium system of appointing judges.