Modi’s Cabinet reboot: 12 out, 15 in

Mansukh Mandaviya is health minister; Jyotiraditya Scindia gets Civil Aviation, Kiren Rijiju Law and Justice, Ashwini Vaishnaw Railways and IT

Effecting a big reset, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday brought in Sarbananda Sonowal, Narayan Rane and Jyotiraditya Scindia as Union Cabinet ministers while dropping 12 ministers, including Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, IT and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and I&B Minister Prakash Javadekar. A total of 43 ministers took oath, out of which 36 were new entrants while the rest were elevated to the Cabinet level.

Fifteen Cabinet ministers were sworn-in. These include Rane, 69, a Rajya Sabha MP and a former Maharashtra chief minister, former Assam CM Sonowal, 58, who earlier served as MoS (Independent charge) for Skill Development under Modi, Scindia, 50, a Rajya Sabha MP from Madhya Pradesh has been Union MoS in the earlier UPA government. Lok Sabha MP from Madhya Pradesh Virendra Kumar, Rajya Sabha MP from Odisha Ashwini Vaishnaw, Rajya Sabha MP from Bihar and JD(U) leader Ramchandra Prasad Singh, Lok Sabha MP from Bihar Pashupati Kumar Paras. Bhupendra Yadav, the BJP organisation’s general secretary.

Kiren Rijiju, Raj Kumar Singh, Hardeep Singh Puri, Mansukh Mandaviya, Parshottam Rupala, G Kishan Reddy and Anurag Thakur were elevated to the Cabinet level. Paras is appointed minister of Food Processing Industries and Bhupendra Yadav is Environment minister.

Others in the Union Council of Ministers are — Lok Sabha MPs Kaushal Kishore, Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma and Pankaj Choudhary from Uttar Pradesh, Shantanu Thakur and Nisith Pramanik from West Bengal, Satya Pal Singh Baghel from Agra, Rajkumar Ranjan Singh from Manipur, A Narayanaswamy from Karnataka, Devusinh Chauhan from Gujarat, Bhagwanth Khuba from Karnataka, Pratima Bhoumik from Tripura, Subhas Sarkar from West Bengal; Rajya Sabha MPs B L Verma from UP, Rajeev Chandrasekhar from Karnataka; BJP’s Tamil Nadu state president L Murugan, and parliamentarians Bharati Pawar (Maharashtra), Ajay Bhatt (Uttarakhand), Ajay Kumar Mishra (UP) and Bishweswar Tudu (Odisha). Meenakshi Lekhi, a popular face of the BJP; Kapil Moreshwar Patil, a zila parishad’s chief in Maharashtra; Bhagwat Kishanrao Karad; Munjapara Mahendrabhai; MP John Barla from West Bengal; L Murugan.

Seven women MPs took oath — Anupriya Patel, Shobha Karandlaje, Darshana Vikram Jardosh, Lekhi, Annpurna Devi, Pratima Bhoumik and Bharati Pravin Pawar.

Rejig just an eyewash: Congress

Congress party’s chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said if the cabinet expansion was to be done on the basis of performance, then the PM should have been the first to be removed for his failures in providing governance. “The Cabinet rejig is an eyewash. First, sack the defence minister [Rajnath Singh] because China encroached on our land under him. Sack the home minister [Amit Shah] because custodial deaths and mob lynching have become common.” Sack Dharmendra Pradhan [Minister for Petroleum ] as he has failed to control fuel prices. Sack finance minister [Nirmala Sitharaman] for mismanagement of the economy.”  Congress senior leader P Chidambaram, on the resignation of education minister Ramesh Pokhriyal, tweeted, “If the Union education minister and his MoS are asked to resign, what does it say about the New Education Policy that was unveiled with great fanfare? The NEP has been criticised by States, educationists, teachers, academics and scholars. The NEP, too, should be shown the Exit door.”

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