BJP heavyweight Rajnath Singh was today appointed as Home Minister and another senior party leader Sushma Swaraj as External Affairs Minister in the new government, in which Arun Jaitley has got Finance Ministry with additional charge of Defence.
A day after being sworn-in as the head of a 45-member coalition government, new Prime Minister Narendra Modi distributed portfolios to his Cabinet colleagues in which Nitin Gadkari has become the Minister of Shipping, Road Transport and Highways.
Modi also brought back Corporate Affairs to Finance headed by Jaitley.
He has also merged Overseas Affairs Ministry with External Affairs and Urban Development and Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation which has been given to another BJP veteran Venkaiah Naidu.
Significantly, first time MP Jitendra Singh, who was elected on a BJP ticket from Udhampur in Jammu and Kashmir, has been made Minister of State in Prime Minister’s Office as also of Department of Personnel, which has an administrative control over the CBI.
The Prime Minister will also be the Cabinet Minister of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Department of Atomic Energy Department of Space.
He will also look after “all important policy issues” and all other portfolios not allocated to any Minister, said an official communique of Rashtrapati Bhavan.
As part of the experiment of restructuring the ministries, Piyush Goel, close confident of Modi, was made Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Power, Coal and New and Renewable Energy portfolios.
The big four — Finance, External Affairs, Defence and Home — constituting the key Cabinet Committee on Security, remain with BJP along with other important portfolios like Railways and Agriculture.
Members of NDA allies — Anant Geethe of Shiv Sena was given Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, Ashok Gajapathi Raju of TDP, Civil Aviation, Ram Vilas Paswan of LJP, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Harsimrat Kaur Badal of SAD, Food Processing Industry.
The star of BJP’s victory in Delhi Harsh Vardhan was given the Health Ministry, while BJP leader Smriti Zubin Irani will look after Human Resources Development.
Former Karnataka Chief Minister D V Sadananda Gowda was given the important portfolio of Railways in his ministerial debut at the Centre.
Ravi Shankar Prasad was alloted the key portfolio of Communication and Information and Technology besides being made the Law Minister.