Narendra Modi has been sworn in as the new Prime Minister of the country. 46-member Union Council of Ministers include 23 Cabinet Ministers, 10 Ministers of State with Independent Charge and 12 Ministers of State. Portfolios of the new Council of Ministers is yet to be announced.
Vetern BJP Leaders LK Advani and Murali Manohar Joshi have not been included in the Council of Ministers. Party leaders Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Shatrughan Sinha and Anurag Thakur also could not get ministerial berth.
The new government does not have any representation from several states like West Bengal, Kerala and some from the Northeast. North Eastern states of Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Manipur, Sikkim and Tripura also remained unrepresented.
There is also no representation in the new government from Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand although BJP swept all the Lok Sabha seats in the two states in the general elections.
BJP President Rajnath Singh, party leaders Arun Jaitley, Nitin Gadkari, Venkaiah Naidu, Sushma Swaraj, Ravishankar Prasad, Sadanand Gowda, Uma Bharati,Gopinath Munde, Kalraj Mishra, Maneka Gandhi, Ananth Kumar, Smriti Irani, Harsh Vardhan, Jual Oram, Narendra Singh Tomar, Radha Mohan Singh and Thavarchand Gehlot were sworn in as cabinet rank ministers.
Najma Heptullah is the only Muslim face as Cabinet Minister in the New Council of Ministrers. LJP leader Ramvilas Paswan, Shiv Sena leader Anant Geete, Akali Dal's Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Ashok Gajpati Raju of TDP were also inducted as cabinet minister.
Rao Inderjit Singh, General VK Singh, Santosh Kumar Gangwar, Sripad Naik, Dharmendra Pradhan, Sarvanand Sonwal, Prakash Javadekar, Piyush Goel, Jitendra Singh and Nirmala Sitharaman took oath as Ministers of State with Independent Charge.
The Ministers of State who took oath are GM Sidheswara, Manoj Sinha, Upendra Kushwaha, P Radhakrishan, Kiren Rijiju, Krishna Pal, Sanjeev Kumar Baliyan, Mansukhbhai Vasava, Rao Saab Danve, Vishnu Deo Sai, Sudarshan Bhagat and Nihal Chand.
Top leaders from SAARC countries including Paksistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Mauritius Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam attended the ceremony. Outgoing Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, Congress President Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, leaders of various other political parties and Chief Ministers of several states were also present on the occasion.
The occasion was ceremonial but it was a carnival atmosphere as Narendra Modi was sworn in as Prime Minister before the largest-ever gathering at Rashtrapati Bhawan. The heat did not deter the Modi admirers who had come hours ahead of the ceremony.
