Prime Minister-designate Narendra Modi plans to signal continuity in his new mandate by retaining senior members of his outgoing administration in the new Council of Ministers, which will be sworn in on Sunday night. Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Nirmala Sitharaman and S Jaishankar, who previously held the Home, Defence, Finance and External Affairs portfolios, will return. Other senior members including Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan, Ashwini Vaishnaw and Hardeep Singh Puri are expected to continue in their positions, ANI reported.
According to the report, while most of the outgoing ministers have been retained, notable absences include Anurag Thakur, who was not invited to meet Modi before the swearing-in, and Smriti Irani, who suffered a major defeat in Amethi . Parshottam Rupala, whose inflammatory comments during the elections sparked a debate, is also unlikely to be included in the new cabinet. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who lost to Shashi Tharoor in a close race, will also be excluded.
Most of the new cabinet members will be allies of the BJP. These include TDP’s Ram Mohan Naidu and Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani, JD(U)’s Lalan Singh and Ram Nath Thakur, and Shiv Sena’s Prataprao Jadhav. Other members of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) include Chirag Paswan, Jitan Ram Manjhi, HD Kumaraswamy, Jayant Chaudhary, and Ramdas Athawale and Anupriya Patel will also take oath, the report added.
Several BJP leaders including Manohar Lal Khattar, CR Patil, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Bandi Sanjay Kumar and Ravneet Singh Bittu are expected to join the Union Council of Ministers. Outgoing BJP ministers including Jyotiraditya Scindia, Bhupender Yadav, Pralhad Joshi, Giriraj Singh, Arjun Ram Meghwal, Jitendra Singh, SPS Baghel, Annapurna Devi, Virendra Kumar, Pankaj Chaudhary, Shobha Karandlaje, Krishna Pal Gurjar and L Murugan will also lend oath, the ANI report further states.
Other big names expected to join the new government include G Kishan Reddy, Sukanta Majumdar, Rao Inderjit Singh, Nityanand Rai, Bhagirath Choudhary, Jitin Prasada and Raksha Khadse. There is talk that BJP national president JP Nadda, whose extended term expires this month, may possibly rejoin the cabinet.
The appointment of Ravneet Singh Bittu, despite his defeat in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, demonstrates the BJP’s aim to improve its position in Punjab. Sanjay Seth of Ranchi and former Union minister Jual Oram of Odisha are also scheduled to take oath, the ANI report added.