Major Union Cabinet reshuffle, 43 ministers take oath at Rashtrapati Bhavan

15 Cabinet ministers and 28 Ministers of State took oath at a ceremony held in the Darbar Hall of the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

In a major Union Cabinet reshuffle, 36 new ministers joined the government while about a dozen ministers resigned from the Cabinet on Wednesday. 15 Cabinet ministers and 28 Ministers of State took oath at a ceremony held in the Darbar Hall of the Rashtrapati Bhavan. The big names who resigned from the Cabinet include Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, Environment and I&B Minister Prakash Javadekar and Labour Minister Santosh Gangwar. Health Minister Harsh Vardhan who was at the receiving end throughout the Covid-19 pandemic for the way he handled the crisis, resigned from the Union Council of Ministers just hours before the expansion.

Of 15, seven new ministers have been promoted to the Cabinet- Kiren Rijiju, Hardeep Singh Puri, Anurag Thakur, Mansukh Mandaviya, G Kishan Reddy, Raj Kumar Singh and Parshottam Rupala. Jyotiraditya Scindia, who was a member of the Congress and had switched to the BJP in 2020, has been made the Civil Aviation Minister, which was once handled by his father Madhavrao Scindia, who died in a plane crash in 2001.

Alongwith Home Ministry, Amit Shah has been given the charge of the newly-created Ministry of Cooperation. Dharmendra Pradhan will now be the Minister of Education and Minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship. Piyush Goyal will now be in-charge of the Ministry of Textiles. Kiren Rijiju will be the Minister of Law and Justice while Hardeep Singh Puri will handle the portfolios of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry and the Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry. Among the new ministers who have been included into the Union Cabinet are- Jyotiraditya Scindia, Narayan Rane, Bhupender Yadav, Sarbananda Sonowal, Shantanu Thakur, Ajay Bhatt, Shobha Karandlaje, Sunita Duggal, Meenakshi Lekhi, Bharati Pawar and Kapil Patil of the BJP; R C P Singh of JD(U), Pashupati Paras of LJP, and Anupriya Patel of Apna Dal.