New Delhi: After 20 months, the Union Cabinet has finally got an expansion. Nineteen new faces have been included in the cabinet. These new faces have taken oath to serve in the ministry. BJP leader SS Ahluwalia, and MJ Akbar and among allies, Anupriya Patel of Apna Dal and Ramdas Athawale of RPI were today included into Modi government’s expanded Cabinet. Two old faces were also included. These were Vijay Goel and Faggan Singh Kulaste. In the reshuffle, five were dropped and Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar was elevated to the Cabinet.
The exercise seems to have been done with an eye on assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, and later, in Gujarat.
Ajay Tamta (Uttarakhand), Arjun Ram Meghwal (Rajasthan), Krishna Raj (UP), Athawale (Maharashtra), Ramesh C Jigajinagi (Karnataka) were among the Dalit MPs who were sworn in during the oath-taking by President Pranab Mukherjee at a ceremony in Rashtrapati Bhawan attended by Vice-President Hamid Ansari, Modi, his Cabinet colleagues, BJP President Amit Shah and leaders of allied parties, among others. No Congress leader was present.
Others who were inducted included P P Chaudhary, C R Chaudhary (Rajasthan), A M Dave, Faggan Singh Kulaste (Madhya Pradesh), Mahendra Nath Pandey (UP), Purshotam Rupala, J Bhabhor and Mansukhbhai Mandaviya (Gujarat), Rajen Gohain (Assam) and S R Bhamre (Maharashtra).
Akbar was elected recently to Rajya Sabha from Madhya Pradesh while Goel represents Rajasthan in the Upper House. Ahluwalia was elected to Lok Sabha from Darjling while Anupriya Patel was elected from Mirzapur in UP.
Those dropped from the ministry are Nihalchand, Ram Shankar Katheria, Sanwar Lal Jat, Manuskhbhai D Vasava and M K Kundariya.
(With agency inputs)
