PM carries out expansion-cum-reshuffle of his Cabinet, inducts nine new faces

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today inducted nine new faces in his ministry and elevated four ministers, including Piyush Goel (Power) and Nirmala Sitharaman (Commerce and Industries) to Cabinet rank. The new ministers were sworn in by President Ram Nath Kovind at a glittering function at Rashtrapati Bhawan. The new entrants to the Union Cabinet include Shiv Pratap Shukla, Rajya Sabha MP from Uttar Pradesh; Ashwini Choubey, Lok Sabha MP from Bihar’s Buxar; Veerandra Kumar, Lok Sabha MP from Madhya Pradesh’s Tikamgah.

The others were Raj Kumar Singh, Lok Sabha MP from Bihar’s Arrah; Anantkumar Hegde, Lok Sabha MP from Karnataka; Hardeep Singh Puri, a highly-decorated former IFS officer; Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Lok Sabha MP from Rajasthan’s Jodhpur; Satya Pal Singh, Lok Sabha MP from Uttar Pradesh’s Baghpat and Alphons Kannanthanam, a distinguished former IAS officer of the 1979 batch, Kerala cadre. Four Ministers of State were elevated to Cabinet rank.
They were Ms Sitharaman, Mr Goel, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Dharmendra Pradhan.

The changes,in the run-up to the Assembly elections in several states, seem clearly aimed at the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The new ministers, who come from diverse social and economic background, and possess rich administrative experience, have been selected by the Prime Minister with a clear mandate to deliver on his vision of new India, authoritative sources said. (UNI)