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Amit Shah has formally taken charge as Home Minister, Prakash Javadekar as Minister of Environment and Rajnath Singh as the Defence Minister. Narendra Singh Tomar has taken charge as the Minister of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare.
The first Parliament session of the new NDA government will be held from 17 June to 26 July, with the election for the Speaker scheduled for 19 June.
The first Cabinet meeting was held on Friday, 31 May, hours after the portfolios were announced.
Catch all the live updates on the swearing-in ceremony here.
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Gujarat BJP chief Jitu Vaghani took to Twitter on Thursday, 30 May, to seemingly congratulate Amit Shah on being part of the Cabinet, hours before the swearing-in ceremony of Narendra Modi and his Council of Ministers.
"I met and congratulated Amit Shah ji after his inclusion in the central Cabinet as a strong partner under the leadership of Narendra Modiji," he wrote in a tweet in Hindi.
Former foreign secretary S Jaishankar was a surprise pick in Narendra Modi's council of ministers. He is a seasoned diplomat who was the Indian government's pointsman for China and the US.
Jaishankar, son of late K Subrahmanyam, one of India's leading strategic analysts, was a key member of the Indian team which negotiated the landmark Indo-US nuclear deal.
Human Resource Development, Environment, Information and Broadcasting, Parliamentary Affairs and party spokesperson too, BJP leader Prakash Javadekar is the man who has played many roles for his party and government.
Basking in the glory of the BJP winning 24 of 25 Lok Sabha seats in Rajasthan, a state where he was poll in-charge, the incumbent HRD minister was sworn in as a minister in a grand ceremony in the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Thursday.
The 68-year-old, who has held several portfolios in the previous Narendra Modi government, is likely to get a key role in the new Cabinet as well.
A politician with an uncanny knack for sensing which way the wind is blowing, Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan has a rare distinction of serving as a minister in the cabinets of six prime ministers.
Thought he did not contest the recent Lok Sabha polls, Paswan is now set to enter the Rajya Sabha, most likely from Bihar.
In 2014, his party joined the BJP-led NDA with Paswan getting the portfolio of Cabinet Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution.
Amethi MP Smriti Irani was among the six women ministers to take oath in the newly-formed government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday, 30 May.
The number of women ministers in this government is lower than the last time, even though the number of women elected in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls is the highest ever.
There were eight women ministers in the last government.
Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Nirmala Sitharaman also took oath as Union ministers, besides Irani. Fatehpur MP Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti (52) took oath as minister of state, along with new entrants Renuka Singh Saruta (55), the MP from Chhattisgarh's Sarguja, and Debashree Chaudhuri (48), the MP from Raiganj in West Bengal.
Doctor-turned-politician Harsh Vardhan was the only MP from the national capital to get a place in Narendra Modi's council of ministers.
Delhi sends seven Lok Sabha MPs to the Lower House and BJP leaders and workers here were also expecting that the party's city unit chief Manoj Tiwari would also be given a place in Modi's cabinet.
Former Delhi BJP president Vijay Goel, who served as a minister of state in the previous Modi dispensation, also did not find a place in the list of new ministers.
Vardhan was appointed Minister of Health and Family Welfare during the Modi government's first stint in 2014 and later, given the charge of the Ministry of Earth Sciences and Ministry of Science and Technology.
In May 2017, he was given the additional charge of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change following the death of Union minister Anil Madhav Dave.
With the list of portfolios for the new Council of Ministers still awaited, the newly-sworn in cabinet led by Prime MInister Narendra Modi are expected to hold their first meet on Friday, 31 June at 5 pm.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in the first 100 days of his second term, will bring in a slew of ‘big-bang’ economic reforms that should please foreign investors, Reuters reported quoting a top official at NITI Aayog.
A day after refusing to be a part of the new Modi cabinet, JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar on Friday, 31 May, said, “When I was told one seat will be given to JD(U), I had said we don't need it but I'll ask my party men. I asked everyone, all of them said it's not appropriate that we show only symbolic participation when we're together.”
He added, “I am seeing reports in newspapers that we had asked for 3 seats, this is false. We had not asked for any seat.”
On the alliance with the BJP, he said, “We're together, not upset.”
Amit Shah will be the new Home Minister, Rajnath Singh the new Defence Minister and Nirmala Sitharaman the new Finance Minister, Rashtrapati Bhavan announced on Friday, 31 May.
Former foreign secretary S Jaishankar has got the External Affairs Ministry while Smriti Irani will be the new Women and Child Development Minister and will retain the Textile Ministry, according to a communiqué.
Nirmala Sitharaman will be the new Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister, while Nitin Gadkari will continue to be the Minister for Road Transport and Highways. Piyush Goyal has been given charge of Railways and Commerce, while Ravi Shankar Prasad will continue to helm the Ministry of Law, Telecom as well as the IT Ministries.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will retain DoPT and Atomic Energy, as well as any important portfolios not yet allocated.
Here is the full list of cabinet ministers in the new Modi government.
Giriraj Singh, after being appointed as Minister of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries, said, “Whatever responsibility I have been given I will work to take it forward in PM's road map. I have already managed this portfolio in Bihar and I will like working in this portfolio once again.”
PM Modi along with Union Ministers Amit Shah, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Dharmedra Pradhan, Giriaj Singh and others have arrived for the first Union Cabinet meeting in the second-tenure of the Modi government.
In his first decision on assuming office, PM Narendra Modi approved on Friday a change in the ‘Prime Minister’s Scholarship Scheme’ under the National Defence Fund.
The following changes have been approved:
The first Parliament session of the new NDA government will be held from 17 June to 26 July, with the election for the Speaker scheduled for 19 June, sources cited by ANI said on Friday. A regular budget will be presented in the session.
The Cabinet has approved the extension of PM Kisan Yojana to all farmers, with Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar saying that nearly 14.5 crore farmers will benefit from the scheme, which will cost the exchequer Rs 87,000 crore annually.
The government has also announced a Rs 10,774-crore pension scheme for farmers.
It also approved a Rs 13,343-crore programme to control diseases among livestock.
The Union Cabinet has also cleared a pension scheme for traders, with three crore retail traders and shopkeepers to benefit from this decision, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar announced at the Cabinet briefing.
The Union Budget will be presented on 5 July, newly sworn-in Union Minister Prakash Javadekar confirmed at a briefing on Friday.
Newly Foreign Minister S Jaishankar tweeted that he is proud to follow on the footsteps of Sushma Swaraj.
Prakash Javadekar takes charge as the Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. Babul Supriyo takes charge as the Minister of State in the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
Amit Shah has formally taken charge as Home Minister. MoS (Ministry of Home Affairs) G Kishan Reddy and Nityanand Rai are also present.
The Rajya Sabha session would be held from 20 June to 26 July, PTI reported on Monday, 3 June.
Published: 30 May 2019,07:50 PM IST