Union Cabinet/ Council of Ministers, India (2019-24)
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Ministers from Rajya, Lok Sabha, 2014/ 19
Ministers from Rajya, Lok Sabha,
First time MPs who became ministers
From: May 31, 2019: The Times of India
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2014, 2019
Ministers from Rajya, Lok Sabha,
First time MPs who became ministers
Those inducted, and those dropped
From: May 31, 2019: The Times of India
See graphic :
2019: Those who were inducted into the Union Cabinet, and those who were dropped
States, assets and age of ministers
See graphic, ' '2019: The states of origin, assets and ages of ministers '
The states that are represented in the cabinet
May 31, 2019: The Times of India
20 of 29 states find place in Team Modi, UP gets rewarded with nine berths
Uttar Pradesh, which sent the highest number of 64 MPs from the ruling alliance to the 17th Lok Sabha, on Thursday got the biggest representation in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s council of ministers. Nine of the 58 ministers are from the state, including the PM who represents Varanasi, followed by eight from Maharashtra and five from Bihar.
Among bigger states, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala could not get any ministerial berth though V Muraleedharan, who represents Maharashtra in Rajya Sabha is Kerala BJP chief.
Twenty of the total 29 states have got one or more ministerial berths. Besides Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the other states that could not get ministerial representation are from the north-east — Sikkim, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and Meghalaya.
BJP, in fact, could not open its account in Andhra Pradesh this year where 22 of the total 25 parliamentary seats went in favour of YSR Congress while the remaining three went to TDP.
Karnataka has four ministers while Rajasthan, Haryana and Gujarat have three each. Punjab, Jharkhand and West Bengal get two each.
Among the states which will see assembly polls this year, Maharashtra got maximum of eight ministers, Haryana three and Jharkhand two. Former chief minister of Jharkhand Arjun Munda got a Cabinet berth. West Bengal, where BJP did remarkably well picking up 18 seats and is eyeing the 2021 assembly polls, got two ministerial berths.
Four out of nine ministers, including the PM, from Uttar Pradesh are of Cabinet rank — Rajnath Singh, Smriti Irani, and Mahendra Nath Pandey being the others.
Maharashtra too got four ministers of Cabinet rank — Nitin Gadkari, Prakash Javadekar, Piyush Goyal and Arvind Ganpat Sawant (MP from south Mumbai). Javadekar and Goyal are Rajya Sabha MPs. Other than Sawant, three of the four were Cabinet ministers during Modi’s first term. Bihar has two Cabinet ministers — Ravi Shankar Prasad and Giriraj Singh — besides Ramvilas Paswan (LJP), who is not an MP. NDA won 39 of the 40 parliamentary seats from the state. While BJP won the highest number of seats (17), its allies JD(U) won 16 and LJP bagged 6. JD(U), however, on Thursday decided not to join the Modi Cabinet due to differences over number of ministerial berths.
Harsh Vardhan, MP from Chandni Chowk in Delhi, is the lone minister from the Capital. Vardhan was the minister of environment and science & technology in the outgoing ministry.
Though he was initially made the health minister, his portfolio was later changed to accommodate J P Nadda. Nadda, however, is not in the ministry this time amid buzz that he might be given the responsibility of the party after induction of party chief Amit Shah in the Cabinet.
Caste composition
May 31, 2019: The Times of India
PM Narendra Modi tried to accommodate representatives of most castes in his Council of Ministers but upper castes got a dominant presence, bagging 32 of the 58 berths. Ministers from Other Backward Classes, a crucial political constituency, numbered 13.
Nine Brahmin leaders have found place in the Union cabinet, including Nitin Gadkari. Three Thakur leaders also made it, including Rajnath Singh, Jodhpur MP Gajendra Singh Thakur and Morena MP Narendra Singh Tomar. Dharmendra Pradhan remains a prominent OBC face in the cabinet, besides Modi himself.
Of the 58 MPs sworn in as ministers, six belonged to the Scheduled Castes and four to the Scheduled Tribes, mostly from Odisha and Jharkhand. Akali Dal leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal and BJP’s Hardeep Puri were the two Sikhs while Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi was the lone Muslim to take oath.
Caste-balance continues to play a key role even as BJP maintains that the verdict of the Lok Sabha polls showed blurring of caste as a factor in voting, even in the Hindi heartland states of UP and Bihar.
Presence of nine Brahmin leaders with Cabinet rank is being seen as a strong message to the community, which has strongly supported the party despite perceived reservations against appointment of Yogi Adityanath as UP CM. BJP’s UP unit president Mahendra Nath Pandey has been inducted as a cabinet minister, apparently to assuage the community.
Arjun Munda’s entry as cabinet minister is yet another signal to the tribal community in Jharkhand, which goes to polls later this year. Incumbent CM in the state Raghubar Das is a non-tribal, but the party won several tribal-dominated constituencies including Dumka, where its candidate defeated JMM patriarch Shibu Soren.
