KalingaTV News Network
New Delhi: Four Minsters were elevated to Cabinet rank while nine new Ministers took oath as Ministers of State (MoS) in the Narendra Modi government at Rashtrapati Bhavan here on Sunday.
MoS (Ind) P&NG, Dharmendra Pradhan & MoS (Ind) Power, Coal & Renewable Energy, Piyush Goyal, MoS (Ind) Commerce & Industry, Nirmala Sitharaman and MoS (Ind) Minority Affairs & Parliamentary Affairs, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi were the four Ministers who were promoted to Cabinet rank.
Among the nine new Ministers included in the Modi-led Council of Ministers were former Diplomat Hardeep Singh Puri & former IAS officer from Kerala K Alphons, better known as the ‘Demolition Man’.
Apart from these two, former Mumbai Police Commissioner Dr. Satya Pal Singh (MP from Baghpat) and former IAS and Lok Sabha MP from Arrah (Bihar), Raj Kumar Singh also took oath.
In addition, Shiv Pratap Shukla (Uttar Pradesh), Ashwini Kumar Choubey (Bihar), Virendra Kumar (Madhya Pradesh), Anant Kumar Hegde (Karnataka) and Gajendra Singh Shekhawat (Rajasthan) were sworn in as Ministers of States.
President Ramnath Kovind administered the oath of office and secrecy to the new ministers at Rashtrapati Bhavan this morning. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, other former and seating Union Ministers, BJP President Amit Shah and others were present at the oath taking ceremony.
According to sources, the portfolios assigned to the new ministers will be announced before PM Modi leaves for China this afternoon. The focus is on whom PM Modi will pick to be the new Defence and Railways ministers.
The Modi-led Council of Ministers will now have 76 Ministers, up from 73. The PM can have a maximum 81 Ministers.
Ms Kalinga