Ex-Foreign Secy Jaishankar most surprise pick for Cabinet; 36 make it for 2nd time
Presiding over the biggest electoral victory for the BJP since its birth in 1980, Narendra Damodardas Modi on Thursday took oath as Prime Minister for the second time in a grand ceremony at the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhawan.
Rajnath Singh was the first person after Modi to take oath as a Cabinet Minister, followed by BJP chief Amit Shah.
Nitin Gadkari, Smriti Irani, Nirmala Sitharaman and Prakash Javadekar were among the 36 Ministers who were sworn in for a second term, while 20 MPs took oath of office as Ministers for the first time.
Besides the Prime Minister, 24 Cabinet Ministers were sworn in, nine took oath as Ministers of State (Independent charge) and 24 others as Ministers of State.
Modi sprung a big surprise by inducting former Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in the Cabinet.
Senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, who attended the glittering ceremony, seemed to have opted out like her party leader Arun Jaitley, on health grounds.
Ram Vilas Paswan, DV Sadananda Gowda, Narendra Singh Tomar, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Thawar Chand Gehlot, Harsh Vardhan, Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi were among those who got a second chance in the Modi Government.
Giriraj Singh, Raj Kumar Singh, Hardeep Singh Puri, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Santosh Kumar Gangwar, Sripad Yaso Naik, Jitender Singh, Kiren Rijiju, Mansukh Mandavia, Arjun Ram Meghwal, Krishan Pal Gurjar, Sanjeev Kumar Balyan, Purshottam Rupala, Ramdas Athavale and Babul Supriyo were among the Ministers of State in the previous Government, who have been retained in the new Government.
Smiriti Irani, the giant slayer who defeated Congress president Rahul Gandhi in Amethi — pocket borough of the Gandhi family for 42 years— was greeted with loud cheer when she walked up to the dais to take oath as a Cabinet Minister.
Shah’s entry to the Cabinet marked the end of his highly successful innings as the BJP president. Given his closeness to the Prime Minister, Shah is expected to be saddled with one of the most important Cabinet portfolios.
Pratap Chandra Sarangi, known as the poorest MP who won his election from Odisha (Balasore) campaigning on his cycle, was made Minister of State (MOS). He was cheered by BJP leaders as he rose to take his turn at the dais.
With an exception of Jaishankar, there was not any other unusual entry into the Council of Ministers. It was almost a repeat of the 2014 profile with six new faces in the Cabinet.
In a ceremony that lasted two hours, 57 Ministers, besides the PM, took oath. Electorally most important State of UP where BJP won 64 LS seats is represented by among others by Irani and Sanjev Balyan.
The Cabinet formation has taken stock of coming Assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand. Maharashtra has seven Ministers, while Haryana has four ministerial representation.
Induction of Jaishankar, a former career diplomat who served as the Foreign Secretary from January 2015 to January 2018, has caught many with surprise. Ambassador to China and the US, Jaishankar who joined Indian Foreign Service in 1977, had played a key role during Indo-US nuclear deal recently at the time of Doklam crisis vis-Ã -vis China.
A sour note in the formation of the Council of Minister was stuck by the NDA ally from Bihar JD(U) which did not join the Cabinet as the BJP did not agree to their demand for three portfolios and was willing to offer only one.
While Ramvilas’s LJP with six LS seat is represented with one berth, the JD(U) wanted more honours for its 17 LS seats from Bihar. Paswan representes the LJP in the Cabinet.
Another NDA ally Aapna Dal and its leader Annupriya Patel did not get a place in the Government though Patel attended the swearing-in ceremony.
Former Union Minister JP Nadda, seen as a front runner for the post of BJP president replacing Shah, was apparently not in the list of Ministers for the same reason.
Though a large number of the Ministers in the Modi-1 were repeated in the Modi-2, the notable miss were Maneka Gandhi, Rajyavardhan Rathore, Suresh Prabhu. Maneka, an eight-time MP, however, is tipped to be interim Speaker for the 17th Lok Sabha. Radha Mohan Singh, Agriculture Minister in the previous regime, and party general secretary Rajiv Pratap Rudy, did not get a berth this time.
Leaders of BIMSTEC countries, including Bangaldesh, Sri Lanka, Mayanmar, Thailand, Bhutan, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and host of high profile businessmen and artists from Mumbai film industry attended the oath ceremony.
Around 8,000 invitees estimated to have attended the swearing-in of Modi after his resounding victory which took BJP past 300 figure with National Democratic Alliance (NDA) standing at stupendous 350 mark.
Former Urban Development Minister Hardeep Puri, who lost his first Lok Sabha poll from Amritsar from where Jaitley also could not win in 2014, has found place in the Council of Ministers as Minister of State (Independent charge).
Former BJP youth wing president and MP from Himachal Pradesh (Hamirpur) and former BCCI president Anurag Thakur, who had missed the bus in the first tenure of Modi, found favour this time round.
Prahlad Joshi, a die-hard RSS loyalist and a fourth time MP from the saffron party’s bastion of Dharwad, was included as a Cabinet Minister.
BJP MP from Telangana G Kishan Reddy, who was sworn-in as a Minister of State, won the Secunderabad Lok Sabha seat in Telangana which was a forte of the TRS.
Among the first timers in the Modi Government are: former Jharkhand Chief Minister Arjun Munda, former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal, four-time MP from Karnataka’s Dharwad Prahlad Joshi, Shiv Sena’s Arvind Sawant, five-time MP from Maharashtra’s Jalna Raosaheb Danve, Gangapuram Kishan Reddy from Telangana, three-time Hamirpur MP Anurag Thakur.
Other first-timers included Debasree Chaudhuri, Kailash Choudhary, Pratap Chandra Sarangi, Rameshwar Teli, Renuka Singh Saruta, V Muraleedharan, Ratan Lal Kataria, Nityanand Rai, Angadi Syresh Channabasappa and Dhotre Sanhay Shamrao.
Prahlad Singh Mulayam Singh Patel, who was the Coal Minister in the Vajpayee Government, took oath at the glittering ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhawan.