Mr Dinesh Trivedi has been made Railway Minister in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government's latest ministerial reshuffle exercise, which has seen no other changes or fresh inductions at the top.
Mr Trivedi, along with Mr Jairam Ramesh, Mr V. Kishore Chandra Deo and Mr Beni Prasad Verma, were the four Cabinet-level Ministers to be sworn in by the President, Ms Pratibha Devisingh Patil, at a ceremony in Rashtrapati Bhawan here on Tuesday.
Mr Ramesh has been promoted from Minister of State with Independent Charge to full Cabinet rank, although the Ministry he would be heading now (Rural Development) is not as high-profile as the one he exited (Environment and Forests). Mr Ramesh's departure has been secretly welcomed by corporates (including agri-biotech firms) who have borne the brunt of his perceived ‘activism'.
The Environment portfolio has gone to former Congress spokesperson, Ms Jayanthi Natarajan, who is a new face in Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh's Council of Ministers. So is Mr Deo, who has been appointed as Union Minister of Tribal Affairs and Panchayati Raj. Given his role in the drafting of the Forest Rights Act of 2006, green groups are hoping that Mr Deo's induction would partly compensate for Mr Ramesh being moved away from Environment.
Mr Verma has been made Union Minister of Steel, which he was already heading as Minister of State with Independent Charge. Belonging to the influential Kurmi community in Uttar Pradesh, Mr Verma's elevation to Cabinet rank is significant in the context of Assembly polls in the State to be held less than a year from now.
The biggest gainer in Tuesday's reshuffle is, however, Mr Trivedi, who was till now only Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare. Mr Trivedi has been given charge of Railways, which has not had a full-time Minister, ever since his leader and Trinamool Congress party supremo, Ms Mamata Banerjee, became the Chief Minister of West Bengal.
Apart from inducting new faces and promoting a few existing ones, Dr Singh has also dropped some Ministers. The most notable of them is Mr Murli Deora, who apparently sought to be relieved himself in the light of allegations of a prominent business house having benefited from certain policy actions during his earlier tenure as Petroleum Minister.
Mr Deora has been replaced as Corporate Affairs Minister by Mr Veerappa Moily, who, in turn, has divested Law and Justice in favour of Mr Salman Khurshid. While Mr Deora will no longer be in Cabinet, his son, Mr Milind, has, however, been made Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology.
The other significant Minister of State appointment is of the Vice-President of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, Mr Rajeev Shukla. He has been given Parliamentary Affairs.
Others to take oath included Mr Srikant Jena and Mr Paban Singh Ghatowar, who were made Ministers of State with Independent Charge of Statistics and Programme Implementation and Development of North Eastern Region respectively.