Key Takeaways
• rajnath singh, amit shah, nitin gadkari, Nirmala Sitharaman, S Jaishankar, and piyush goyal were included in Modi's council of ministers. All these leaders held crucial portfolios in the previous Modi government.
• bjp chief jagat prakash nadda has also become a minister. He will likely be given a crucial portfolio in the Modi 3.0 government. His inclusion has triggered speculation that the bjp may get a new president soon.
• Several former chief ministers were sworn in as ministers, including Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Manohar Lal Khattar, HD Kumaraswamy, Jitan ram Manjhi, and Sarbanand Sonowal.
• A host of bjp allies were given space in the Cabinet. HD Kumaraswamy, Jitan ram Manjhi, Rajiv ranjan singh alias Lalan Singh, Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu, chirag paswan became cabinet ministers.
• The bjp, which managed to win only 240 seats in the lok sabha elections, relies on its nda allies, mainly N Chandrababu Naidu's tdp and Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal United, to cross the majority mark. Several bjp allies, including RLD's Jayant Chaudhary, were sworn in as MoS and MoS (independent charge).
• Actor-turned-politician suresh Gopi, who is the first bjp mp from Kerala, and Harsh Malhotra, who won lok sabha polls from east Delhi, are among the first-time MPs in the Union Cabinet.
• All states which send four or more MPs to the 543-member lok sabha have found representation in the council of ministers, besides smaller states like goa and Arunachal Pradesh, reported PTI.
• bihar, Uttar Pradesh and maharashtra have the highest number of leaders in Modi's council of ministers. Four ministers out of total 8 from bihar have got cabinet rank. Uttar Pradesh got nine berths, including one in the cabinet (Rajnath Singh). maharashtra, which goes to the assembly polls in October, has its six MPs in the council of ministers.
• Out of 72 ministers, 7 are women. At least 42 ministers are from the Other Backward Class(OBC), Scheduled Caste(SC) and Scheduled Tribe(ST) categories.
• 37 ministers from the previous Modi government have been dropped from the council of ministers. Seven of these ministers held the cabinet rank, including Smriti Irani, anurag thakur and Narayan Rane. Among the notable names who were dropped as ministers are arjun Munda, Parshottam Rupala, Mahendra Nath Pandey, rk Singh, Kailash Choudhary, sanjeev kumar Balyan, Faggansingh Kulaste, VK Singh, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti , rajeev Chandrasekhar, v muraleedharan and Meenakashi Lekhi.