Home minister Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi (file photo)
Following Modi's cabinet reshuffle, forty-three ministers took oath for their new departments today in the Rashtrapati Bhavan. While thirty-six are new ministers, the remaining have been reassigned to different departments. The reshuffle follows criticism for the centre's handling of the second wave of Covid-19 ahead of upcoming, important elections.
The seven who were part of the earlier cabinet and took oath for different departments today are Kiren Rijiju, Hardeep Singh Puri, G Kishan Reddy, Mansukh Mandaviya, Anurag Thakur, G Kishan Reddy, Parshottam Rupala and Raj Kumar Singh. The Ministers of Home, Defence, Foreign Affairs and Finance, however, remain untouched.
The list of ministers who took oath today includes Narayan Rane, Sarbananda Sonowal, Dr Virendra Kumar, Jyotiraditya M Scindia, Ramchandra Prasad Singh, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Pashupati Paras, Raj Kumar Singh, Bhupender Yadav, Pankaj Choudhary, Anupriya Singh Patel, Dr Satya Pal Singh Baghel, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Shobha Karandlaje, Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma, Darshana Vikram Jardosh, Meenakshi Lekhi, Annapurna Devi, A Narayanaswamy, Kaushal Kishore, Ajay Bhatt, BL Verma, Ajay Kumar, Chauhan Devusinh, Bhagwanth Khuba, Kapil Moreshwar Patil, Pratima Bhoumik, Dr Subhas Sarkar, Dr Bhagwat Kishanrao Karad, Dr Bharati Pravin Pawar, Bishweswar Tudu, Shantanu Thakur, Dr Munjapara Mahendrabhai, John Barla, Dr L Murugan and Nisith Pramanik. Notably, seven ministers are from Uttar Pradesh, a stronghold of the BJP, which is gearing up for the assembly elections to be held next year.
Ahead of the swearing-in ceremony, 12 ministers resigned, including Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, who is facing backlash for mismanagement of the second wave of Covid-19, which wreaked havoc countrywide. Others who resigned are IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, Environment Minister Prakash Javdekar, Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, Labour Minister Santosh Gangwar, Babul Supriyo, Sadananda Gowda, Debasree Chaudhuri, Rattan Lal Kataria, Sanjay Dhotre, Thawarchand Gehlot, Pratap Chandra Sarangi (MoS) and Ashwini Chaubey (MoS).
Much to everybody's surprise, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad failed to keep a department despite being deemed to be part of the government's core team. Both Prasad and Prakash Javdekar were ministers in the Vajpayee government.