Modi 3.0 to signal continuity with change: Rajnath, Shah, Nirmala, Gadkari retained; Nadda, Chouhan, Khattar, Kumaraswamy to be inducted, Anurag dropped

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, June 9

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday addressed his new council of ministers which is set to take oath this evening.

The council signals the PM’s intent towards continuity with change in order to keep the growth momentum going.

The BJP will retain all key strategic, finance and infrastructure ministries with all top ministers Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nirmala Sitharaman, Nitin Gadkari, Piyush Goyal, S Jaishankar, Dharmendra Pradhan, Mansukh Mandaviya, Ashwini Vaishnaw and Hardeep Puri retained.

Jyotoraditya Scindia, Rao Inderjit and Jitender Singh have also been repeated along with Dharmendra Pradhan, Bhupender Yadav, Giriraj Singh, Nityanand Rai, Arjun Meghwal, Pralhad Joshi, Shobha Karandlje, L Murugan, Kiran Rijiju and RSP’s Ramdas Athawale.

Among prominent ministers to be dropped are five-term Hamirpur MP Anurag Thakur, who is the outgoing Information and Broadcasting minister, Rajeev Chandrashekhar, outgoing MoS, IT, and Smriti Irani who lost from Amethi to Congress’s KL Sharma.

Prominent new inductions are BJP chief JP Nadda from Himachal (Nadda’s term as BJP chief will end in June); former CMs Shivraj Singh Chouhan (MP), ML Khattar (Haryana), JDS’ HD Kumaraswamy (Karnataka), HAM leader and Bihar ex-CM Jitan Manjhi.

Other new faces are Ravneet Bittu, who lost Ludhiana seat to Congress, Jitin Prasada who won Pilibhit segment where BJP had replaced sitting MP Varun Gandhi.

NDA party Apna Dal’s Anupriya Patel, LJP’s Chirag Paswan, RLD’s Jayant Chaudhary, TDP’s Rammohan Naidu and Kerala’s lone BJP MP Suresh Gopi will also be in the cabinet.

Other ministers will be Shripad Naik, Sanjay Seth, Annapurna Devi, CR Patil, Sanjay Bandi and Jual Oram.