Senior BJP leader and former minister of state for Commerce, Nirmala Sitharaman, has now been given the portfolio of Defence Ministry.
Sitharaman is the second woman after Indira Gandhi to hold the charge of the Defence Ministry. Among the other major reshuffles of the day, Piyush Goyal was promoted as a cabinet minister and was given charge of the Railways.
Suresh Prabhu will now hold the charge of Commerce Ministry vacated by Sitharaman while Arun Jaitley will keep Finance Portfolio & Ministry of Corporate Affairs.
Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan will hold additional charge of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship ministry while Uma Bharti will head Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation.
Nitin Gadkari has got additional charge of Water Resources Ministry, River Development Ganga Rejuvenation. He already holds the charge of Ministry for Road Transport and Highways and Shipping.
Rajyavardhan Rathore is now also Minister (Independent Charge) of Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports while Vijay Goel will be MoS Parliamentary Affairs and MoS Statistics and Program Implementation.
Among the new faces, two former bureaucrats, one retired diplomat and an ex-police official are took oath into the Council of Ministers on Sunday in a major revamp by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Among new faces, Satyapal Singh, Ashwini Kumar Chaubey, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Hardeep Singh Puri, R K Singh, Anant Kumar Hegde, Alphons Kannanthanam, Virendra Kumar, and Shiv Pratap Shukla took oath as ministers.
Three of the BJP MPs being inducted -- Virendra Kumar (63), Anant Kumar Hegde (49) and Gajendra Singh Shekhawat (49) -- are from Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Rajasthan respectively where Assembly polls are due next year.
Former IAS officer Alphons Kannanthanam (64), who hails from Kerala, is another pick by Modi, a move seen as the BJP's efforts to expand its base in the southern state to take on the ruling Left Democratic Front led by the CPI(M).
65-year-old Puri was India's permanent representative at the United Nations, and Kannanthanam are not members of Parliament.
The names picked by Modi suggest his vision of striking a balance between merit and demands of real politik.
While he has picked people with proven administrative and professional expertise such as Puri, Satyapal Singh (61), R K Singh (64) and Kannanthanam, he has also chosen lingayat leader Hegde from Karnataka and farmer leaders Shekhawat and Kumar from Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.
Lingayat community is one of the dominant communities of Karnataka which has influenced poll outcomes in several Assembly segments.
As government sources disclosed the names, a surprise factor was the absence of members of BJP's allies like JD(U) and Shiv Sena from the list.
Though top BJP leaders maintained silence on the development, sources in the party said it was likely due to lack of a formula for representation which could satisfy all allies.
Paving way for the rejig, Union ministers -- Kalraj Mishra, Bandaru Dattatreya, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Sanjiv Kumar Balyan, Faggan Singh Kulaste and Mahendra Nath Pandey -- had resigned two days ago.
There was speculation over the likely choice for the post of the defence minister, and names of Suresh Prabhu and Nitin Gadkari were doing the rounds.
While Shukla (65) is a Rajya Sabha MP from Uttar Pradesh, Choubey (64) has been elected to the Lok Sabha from Buxar in Bihar.
Virendra Kumar represents the Tikamgah constituency of Madhya Pradesh in the Lok Sabha.
Hegde is a five-time Lok Sabha MP from Uttara Kannada in Karnataka, while Raj Kumar Singh is a first time MP from Arrah in Bihar. Shekhawat represents Jodhpur seat in the Lower House.
Satya Pal Singh is a Lok Sabha MP from Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh and a former Maharashtra-cadre IPS officer of the 1980 batch.
Kannanthanam was known as 'Demolition Man' for having ordered razing of thousands of illegal constructions when he was heading the Delhi Development Authority.
The selection of nine new names for ministership has been done by Modi keeping in view the 4Ps -- passion, proficiency, professional and political acumen, to deliver on his vision of a new India, official sources said.
Committed to his track record of identifying fellow team members on the basis of merit and future potential, the prime minister will place them strategically in key ministries, especially focusing on last mile delivery directly to the people, they said.
The prime minister is committed to his vision of a new India, which will be built on the foundations of development and good governance, to further the cause of the poor, marginalised and the deprived segments of the society, the sources said.
(PTI)
