Full list of ministers in the Narendra Modi Cabinet of 2019
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, left, with newly sworn cabinet ministers greet the invitees at the end of the swearing in ceremony at the forecourt of presidential palace in New Delhi, India, Thursday, May 30, 2019.
Here is the full list of MPs sworn in as Union Ministers, Ministers of State
BJP leader Narendra Modi on Thursday was sworn in as Prime Minister for the second time. Fifty seven Ministers took oath with him.
By winning 303 seats, the Bharatiya Janata Party got the decisive mandate to rule the country for the next five years. Even though the party has the required numbers to form the government on its own, it has decided to accommodate its allies in the Ministries.
Kailash Choudhary
Kailash Choudhary was elected to Lok Sabha for the first time by defeating former BJP veteran Jaswant Singh’s son Manvendra Singh, who had crossed over to Congress last year, by a margin of over three lakh votes in Barmer, which is the country’s second largest Lok Sabha constituency. He was earlier elected an MLA from Barmer district’s Baytu constituency, but was defeated in the 2018 State Assembly election.
Debasree Chaudhuri
Debasree Chaudhuri is the BJP general secretary for West Bengal. She was elected to the Lower House of Parliament from the state’s Bardhaman-Durgapur seat.
Pratap Chandra Sarangi
This MP from Balasore is, perhaps, the highlight of tonight’s ceremony during which he received a standing ovation.
Known for his frugal living, the two-time BJP MLA from Nilagiri assembly segment — also known as ‘ Odisha’s Modi’ — defeated BJD’s Rabindra Kumar Jena.
Som Parkash
This former IAS officer from Punjab was an MLA from the State’s Phagwara assembly constituency before he was elected to the Lok Sabha from Hoshiarpur.
Rameswar Teli
This BJP leader from Assam was elected to the Lok Sabha from the state’s Dibrugah constituency. He beat Congress veteran Paban Singh Ghatowar by a record margin of over 3.6 lakh votes this year. In 2014 too, he contested against Mr. Ghatowar, beating the five-time parliamentarian by a margin of over 1.85 lakh votes.
Renuka Singh
This first time MP was elected from the Surguja Lok Sabha constitutency in Chhattisgarh. The constituency was previously held by BJP’s Kamalbhan Singh Marabi.
V. Muraleedharan
Mr. Muraleedharan, who took oath as Union Minister of State, is former state president of BJP in Kerala. He is a Rajya Sabha MP and the fourth BJP leader from Kerala in the Upper House.
Rattan Lal Kataria
This BJP leader was elected to the Lok Sabha from Haryana’s Ambala constituency. He held the constituency in 1999, but lost to Congress’ Kumari Selja for two consecutive elections before he won it back in 2014.
Nityanand Rai
Nityanand Rai is a BJP leader from Bihar, who was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Ujiarpur constituency. He was elected from the same constituency in 2014 as well.
Mr. Rai is the current head of BJP in Bihar.
Suresh Angadi
First-time Minister Suresh Angadi represents Karnataka’s Belgaum constituency in the Lok Sabha.
With the induction of Mr. Angadi, BJP hopes to strengthen its hold in North Kannada region.
Anurag Singh Thakur
Son of former Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal, Anurag Thakur was the President of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, until the Supreme Court appointed a Committee of Administrators to govern the cricket body.
Mr. Thakur was the Chief Whip of BJP in the 16th Lok Sabha. He has been representing Hamirpur, a seat represented by his father, since 2008. Mr. Thakur was the president of BJP’s Yuva Morcha. He is also part of the territorial army.
Dhotre Sanjay Shamrao
This BJP leader was elected to the Lok Sabha from Maharashtra’s Akola constituency. This is the fourth time he’s been elected from this constituency.
Sanjeev Kumar Balyan
Sanjeev Kumar Baliyan represents Muzaffarnagar. He defeated RLD chief Ajit Singh in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. He was Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Processing in Modi 1.0. He was an accused in the 2013 Muzaffarnagr riots. In January 2019, the Uttar Pradesh government decided to withdraw 18 cases related to the Muzaffarnagar riots and asked the district authorities to approach the court. Several leaders of the ruling BJP, including Mr. Balyan and Bharatendra Singh, MLAs Sangeet Som and Umesh Malik, have been named in these 125 cases.
Babul Supriyo
Supriya Baral, better known by his screen name Babul Supriyo is a prominent playback singer known for crooning some memorable Bollywood numbers. Mr. Supriyo joined the BJP in 2014 and was one of the two MPs from West Bengal. He was the youngest Minister in Modi 1.0. After being a junior Minister for Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation, he was transferred to Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises Ministry.
Niranjan Jyoti
NiranjanJyoti served as Minister of State for Food Processing Industries in the outgoing government. Ms. Jyoti stoked a controversy by allegedly making communal remarks and using an expletive in an election rally in Delhi, leaving the BJP and the government embarrassed as an angry Opposition demanded that she be sacked. The remarks that voters of Delhi should choose between “Ram’s sons” and “illegitimate sons” drew the ire of Opposition which protested in Parliament following which Ms. Jyoti expressed “deep regret” and apologised for her actions and said she did not intend to hurt anyone’s feelings.
Ramdas Athawale
President of Republican Party of India (A), Ramdas Athwale is a Rajya Sabha member and the Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment in the outgoing government. A prominent Dalit leader from Maharashtra, Mr. Athwale was part of the Dalit Panthers movement. He was associated with various parties including the NCP, and Congress, and finally joined the NDA in 2014. In the parliament, Mr. Athawale is known for his impromptu shayaris.
Purushottam Rupala.
Gujarat BJP leader Purushottam Rupala was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2016. He hails from Amreli district and is considered an influential Patel leader from Saurashtra. He has been the State BJP president (2006-09) as well as a Rajya Sabha member earlier (2008-2014). He also served as a Minister in the Gujarat Government from 1995 to 2002.
Kishan Reddy
G. Kishan Reddy is Telangana BJP president and he won the Secunderabad seat. He succeeded BJP veteran Bandaru Dattatreya in the seat. Mr. Kishan Reddy was the MLA of Amberpet Assembly seat thrice.
Raosaheb Danve
Raosaheb Dadarao Danve is currently Maharashtra BJP chief. He won the Jalna Lok Sabha seat for the fifth straight time in 2019.
Kishan Pal Gujjar
Born in a farmer family in Mewla Maharajpur village in Haryana, Faridabad MP Krishan Pal Gurjar, was the Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment in the previous Narendra Modi government. He also served as Minister of State for Shipping, Road Transport and Highways in the Modi government for the first six months.
Mr. Gurjar defeated his nearest rival and Congress leader Avtar Singh Bhadana with a record margin of more than six lakh votes in 2019 to improve his own victory record of over four lakh votes in 2014.
A Law graduate, Mr. Gurjar was active in students politics. He started his journey to electoral politics as a BJP councillor in 1994. In 1996, he was elected as MLA from Mewal Maharajpur and served as Transport Minister in Bansi Lal government. He was made the Haryana BJP chief in 2009. He enjoys the reputation of being soft-spoken and amiable.
V.K. Singh
General (Retd.) V.K. Singh, former Army Chief, came into prominence over the legal war he waged against the establishment over his date of birth. He eventually lost the war when the Supreme Court in 2012 refused to intervene in his plea, pointing out that the Army Chief, who accepted the government’s decision in determining his date of birth on three occasions, could not go back on his commitment. The Union Minister of State for External Affairs in the first Modi Ministry is infamous for his comments against journalists calling them “presstitutes” and for his 2015 “government cannot be blamed if somebody throws a stone at a dog” remark he made in the context of the murder of two Dalit children in Faridabad. During the evacuation of Indians from war-torn Yemen, he received praise from his senior, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj who credited him for “leading from the front like a General” during the operations.
Arjun Ram Meghwal
This former civil servant from Rajasthan quit administration to join politics in 2009 by contesting from Bikaner Lok Sabha seat. He has been representing the constituency since then. In the recently-concluded elections, Mr. Meghwal defeated his cousin Madan Gopal.
Mr. Meghwal was the Chief Whip of BJP in Lok Sabha in 2014. Two years later, he was made a junior minister who handled various portfolios including Finance, Parliamentary Affair, rural development, Ganga Rejuvenation, among others. Mr. Meghwal was the recipient of the Best Parliamentarian Award in 2013.
Ashwini Kumar Choubey
Ashwini Kumar Choubey served as Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare in Modi 1, and a member of the 16th Lok Sabha. He was re-elcted from Buxar in 2019.
Mansukh Mandaviya
Mansukh Laxmanbhai Mandaviya, 46, is one of the young members of Modi 1.0 in which he served as Minister of State. He is from Gujarat and has also served as an MLA in the State.
Faggan Singh Kulaste
Faggan Singh Kulaste, 60, was a former Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare. He represents Mandla constituency of Madhya Pradesh.
Hardeep Singh Puri
Diplomat-turned-politician, Hardeep Singh Puri made his unsuccessful foray into electoral battle in Amritsar in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Mr. Puri was made Union Minister of State for Urban Housing in September 2017 and a Rajya Sabha member from Uttar Pradesh in January 2018. He has authored two books — Perilous Interventions: The Security Council and the Politics of Chaos and Delusional Politics: Back To The Future. His wife Lakshmi Puri is also a diplomat, and is curently serving as Deputy Executive Director, Strategic Partnerships, Coordination and Intergovernmental Support Bureau, U.N. Women.
Raj Kumar Singh
This former bureaucrat is the MP from Bihar’s Arrah seat. He joined the BJP in 2013 and was fielded in Arrah the next year. In 2019, he defeated CPI(M-L)(L)’s Raju Yadav by more than 1,40,000 votes. He served as MoS in the renewable energy and power Ministries in Modi 1.0.
Prahlad Singh Patel
This is the second stint for Prahalad Patel as a Minister. He previously held the portfolio of coal in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ministry. Mr. Patel was the national president of the Bharatiya Janata Mazdoor Mahasangh, the trade union wing of the BJP. He was elected to the Lok Sabha from Madhya Pradesh’s Damoh constituency.
Union Minister of State Kiren Rijiju
Kiren Rijiju takes oath. The Minister of State for Home Affairs in the outgoing government, Mr. Rijiju is the face of BJP in the Northeast. He is representing Arunachal (West) for the third time. Known for his oratory skills, Mr. Rijiju is one of the few leaders from the Northeast to make a mark in the national scene. His father Rinchin Kharu was the first pro-tem Speaker of the Arunachal Pradesh Assembly. Mr. Rijiju faced criticism for the MHA’s decision to send Rohingya Muslims back to Myanmar at a time when the country was accused of ethnic cleansing. He also had to apologise in the Lok Sabha for mistakenly referring Tamils as refugees.
Jitendra Singh
Jitendra Singh takes oath. Dr. Singh represents Jammu and Kashmir’s Udhampur in Lok Sabha. An endocrinology professor and a practicing medical professional, Dr. Singh was a junior Minister in the PMO and in-charge of North East Development in the outgoing government. Dr. Singh courted controversy with his remarks on abolishing the Article 370 that gives special status to Jammu and Kashmir.
Shripad Yesso Naik
Shripad Yesso Naik takes oath. Mr. Naik is the BJP’s North Goa MP. He served as MoS in the AYUSH and Health Ministries in the previos government.
Gurugram MP Rao Inderjit Singh
Rao Inderjit Singh is represents Gurgaon in Haryana. A senior Ahirwal leader he served as Union Minister of State for Planning (independent charge) in the first Modi Ministry. He joined the BJP before the Lok Sabha election in 2014. A five-time MP, he defeated his nearest rival and Congress leader Capt. Ajay Yadav with more than four lakh votes to win Gurgaon Lok Sabha seat for the third consecutive term. He had earlier represented Mahendergarh Lok Sabha seat twice. Mr. Singh had quit Congress to join the BJP in 2014 following his differences with the then Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. Mr. Singh has also been Minister of State for External Affairs and Defence Production during the UPA rule. Descendant of Rao Tula Rao, the 1857-Independence War freedom fighter, he has earlier been MLA four times and served as minister in the Haryana government. His father late Rao Birender Singh has been Chief Minister of Haryana and Union Agriculture and Food and Supplies Minister.
Santosh Kumar Gangwar
Santosh Kumar Gangwar represents Bareilly and held the the portfolio of Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Labour and Employment in the previous Ministry.
Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat
Gajendra Singh Shekhawat was the Minister of State for Agriculture in the previous Narendra Modi government. He defeated Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s son Vaibhav Gehlot in Jodhpur by a margin of 2.74 lakh votes.
Mr. Shekhawat is known for his active use of social media and is the most followed Indian politician on Quora. A person with RSS roots, Mr. Shekhawat is credited for organising Swadeshi Mela in Jodhpur, a platform to showcase indigeneous produces.
Giriraj Singh
Firebrand BJP leader from Bihar Giriraj Singh won the Lok Sabha election this time from Begusarai by defeating CPI candidate and former JNU student’s union president Kanhaiya Kumar by over 4 lakh votes. Mr. Singh was the only minister from Bihar in previous Modi government.
Mr. Singh has often grabbed headlines with his talks that leaned towards hard Hindutva and muscular nationalism. The Election Commission took action against him for his anti-Muslim comments during the election campaign. Though known to be close to Mr. Modi and Mr. Shah, his political differences with State leaders like Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi and State party chief Nityanand Rai is an open secret.
Union Minister Piyush Goyal
Railways and Coal Minister in the outgoing Cabinet, Mr. Goyal served as the Interim Finance Minister when Arun Jaitley was undergoing medical treatment. The last budget of the NDA government was presented by Mr. Goyal.
A Chartered Accountant and Law graduate, Mr. Goyal was an investment banker before joining politics. His father Ved Prakash Goyal was a minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government.
Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi
The Muslim face of BJP, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi was elected to Rajya Sabha in 2016 from Jharkhand. He served as Minority Affairs Minister in Narendra Modi’s government. He has also handled Parliamentary Affairs and I&B portfolios earlier as a junior minister.
Smriti Irani
History will remember the actor-turned-politician as the woman who defeated Congress president Rahul Gandhi in his traditional stronghold Amethi.
A firebrand leader, this is Ms. Irani’s first entry to the Lok Sabha. She had unsuccessfully contested from Chandini Chowk and Amethi earlier.
Her stint as a Minister in Mr. Modi’s cabinet was a controversial one. When she was the HRD Minister, Dalit Scholar Rohith Vemula ended his life citing harassment and witholding stipend in his suicide note, which spearheaded country-wide campus uprisings. During her term as I&B Minister, a set of National Awardees boycotted the event after it was announced that President won’t be distributing awards to all of them. She was also the Textiles Minister. Ms. Irani’s educational qualification was also a subject of debate as it was found that degree was different everytime she filed nomination for contesting elections.
Prakash Javadekar
A prominent leader from Maharashtra who made it big in Delhi, Prakash Javdekar is currently a Rajya Sabha member elected from Madhya Pradesh. He had earlier held Environment, Information and Broadcasting, and Parliamentary Affairs portfolios as well. Mr. Javadekar is also a spokesperson of the BJP.
He started his political career as a student leader of ABVP and took part in the anti-Emergency protests.
S. Jaishankar
Former foreign secretary S Jaishankar, a surprise pick in Narendra Modi’s council of ministers, is a seasoned diplomat who was the Indian government’s pointsman for China and the US.
Mr. Jaishankar, son of late K. Subrahmanyam, one of India’s leading strategic analysts, was a key member of the Indian team which negotiated the landmark Indo-US nuclear deal. The deal, initiated in 2005, took several years to craft, and was signed by the UPA government headed by Manmohan Singh in 2007.
Mr. Jaishankar’s appointment as foreign secretary in January 2015 had evoked a sharp reaction from various quarters over the timing of the government’s decision to remove Sujatha Singh.
The 64-year-old had earlier served as India’s Ambassador to the US and before that to China. A 1977-batch IFS officer, Mr. Jaishankar played a key role in resolving the crisis following the incursion in Ladakh’s Depsang and the Doklam stand-off, handling the tough negotiations with Beijing. Among other positions, Mr. Jaishankar has been India’s High Commissioner to Singapore and Ambassador to the Czech Republic.
Ravi Shankar Prasad
Law and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad made his maiden entry to the Lok Sabha by defeating his erstwhile party colleague Shatrugan Sinha in Bihar’s Patnasahib constituency.
Ravi Shankar Prasad
A Supreme Court lawyer, Mr. Prasad started his political journey as an ABVP leader. He had participated actively in the“JP movement”, a student movement in Bihar started by veteran socialist leader Jay Prakash Narayan.
His father Thakur Prasad too had been a leading advocate of the Patna High Court and one of the leading founders of the Jan Sangh, which later became BJP. Under Vajpayee and Narendra Modi’s cabinet, Mr. Prasad ealier served as junior minister of Coal, Communication, and I&B too.
Harsimrat Kaur Badal
Harsimrat Kaur Badal is the daughter-in-law of Shironmani Akali Dal patriach Parkash Singh Badal. Her husband Sukhbir Singh Badal was formerly Punjab’s Deputy Chief Mininster. Ms. Badal was one of the few women ministers in Modi’s cabinet and handled Food Processing Ministry. She is the lone minister from Shironmani Akali Dal.
Nirmala Sitharaman
Nirmala Sitharaman has the distinction of being the first full-time woman Defence Minister. Ms. Sitharaman hails from Tamil Nadu, is married into a Telugu family, and represents Karnataka in Rajya Sabha.
She first served as a junior minister handling commerce portfolio in the Narendra Modi cabinet before being elevated as the Defence Minister. She was also a spokesperson of BJP.
Ram Vilas Paswan
Mr. Paswan did not contest the General Elections this time, but his party had won all six parliamentary seats it had contested in Bihar. Under the seat-sharing pact of NDA, the BJP president Amit Shah had, earlier, announced that Mr. Paswan would be sent to Rajya Sabha on first opportunity.
Mr. Paswan has been a Union Minister under several Prime Ministers. He was the Labour Minister under V.P Singh, Railway Minister in the United Front government, handled Mines and IT portfolio during Vajpayee’s rule and was the Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers during UPA-1. In the outgoing cabinet, Mr. Paswan was the Consumer Affairs Minister.
Sadananda Gowda
Former Chief Minister of Karnataka Sadananda Gowda has been associated with the saffron party since Jana Sangh days. He was handpicked by B.S. Yeddyurappa to become the Karnataka Chief Minister when the veteran Karanataka BJP leader had to step down after his name surfaced in the illegal mining cases.
However, Mr. Gowda’s chief ministership was short-lived as he had to make way for Jagadish Shetter. After facing a humiliating defeat in the 2013 Assembly elections, Mr. Gowda won the subsequent Lok Sabha elections from Bangalore North and shifted base to Delhi.
Mr. Gowda handled Railways, Law, Statistics, and Fertilizers Ministry in the outgoing government. Mr. Gowda presented the first Railway Budget of the Modi government, which had promised a high-speed bullet train. Two years later, the Railway Budget became a part of the General Budget.
Arvind Sawant
The firebrand Shiv Sena leader was elected from Mumbai South by defeating Mumbai Congress chief Milind Deora. Mr. Sawant took voluntary retirement from state-owned MTNL in 1995 and joined politics. He is still the president of MTNL workers union.
Mr. Sawant is also a prominent facing in television debates as Sena’s representative. This is Mr. Sawant’s first stint in the Lok Sabha and has been rewarded with a ministerial berth.
Dr Harsh Vardhan
A prominent face in the Delhi BJP, Harsh Vardhan, 64, was the party’s Chief Ministerial candidate in the 2013 Delhi Assembly polls. He served as the Leader of the Opposition as the BJP could not form government then. He became an MP from Chandni Chowk in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and became Health Minister in the Modi Cabinet. However the stint lasted only about six months when he was moved to the Science and technology Ministry. He was given additional charge of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Ministry in May 2017.
He is known for his claims that Indians had practised inoculation against small pox even before the vaccine was invented by Edward Jenner and that Stephen Hawking had said Vedas had a ‘theory’ superior to Einstein’s thesis. In November 2018, he made his heavily-trolled comment “explaining” Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s gotra.
Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank
Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, was Uttarakhand Chief Minister between 2009 and 2011. He became a Lok Sabha member in 2014.
Rajnath Singh
Rajnath Singh, the BJP’s Uttar Pradesh strongman, became the 19th Chief Minister of the State in 2000. He became BJP president for the first time 2005 and then again in 2013 till 2014. He was instrumental in promoting Modi as PM candidate of the party for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. After the polls he was made the Home Minister of India.
Arjun Munda
Arjun Munda, 51, became the second Chief Minister of Jharkhand, after it was carved out from the Bihar, and went on to hold the post for two more terms. He also served as an MP from Jamshedpur in 2009 and made it to the Lok Sabha in 2019 from the Khunti seat.
