In a rude shock to many as many as 37 ministers have been dropped from the government in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s third term and these include seven with cabinet rank — prominent among them being Smriti Irani, Anurag Thakur and Narayan Rane.
Parshottam Rupala, Arjun Munda, RK Singh and Mahendra Natha Pandey also held cabinet positions in the second Modi government but were not retained in the council of ministers that took oath on Sunday
While all three ministers with independent charge have been retained, out of 42 ministers of state, 30 have been dropped.
Those who have not been repeated include VK Singh, Faggansingh Kulaste, Ashwini Choubey, Danve Raosaheb Dadarao, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, Sanjeev Balyan, Rajeev Chandrashekhar, Subhas Sarkar, Nisith Pramanik, Rajkumar Ranjan Singh and Pratima Bhoumik.
Meenakshi Lekhi, Munjapara Mahendrabhai, Ajay Kumar Mishra, Kailash Choudhary, Kapil Moreshwar Patil, Bharati Pravin Pawar, Kaushal Kishore, Bhagwanth Khubha and V Muraleedharan have also not been retained.
Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma, John Barla, Bishweswar Tudu, Bhagwat Kishanrao Karad, Devusinh Chauhan, Ajay Bhatt, A Narayanaswamy, Som Parkash, Rameswar Teli and Darshana Vikram Jardosh have also not made it to the new council of ministers.
Eighteen of the dropped ministers had lost the elections. L Murugan is the only minister of state from the previous government who lost the election but has been retained. He is already a member of the Rajya Sabha.
Smriti Irani, a cabinet minister in both terms of the Modi government, lost the election from Amethi to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s aide Kishori Lal Sharma by a margin of over 1.69 lakh votes.
Irani was HRD Minister and textiles minister in the first term while she held women and child development and minority affairs portfolios in Modi 2.0.
