New Delhi: In a major Union Cabinet reshuffle, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Wednesday dropped about a dozen ministers, including Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, IT and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and I&B Minister Prakash Javadekar, and brought Sarbananda Sonowal, Narayan Rane, Jyotiraditya Scindia and 33 other new members to his government.
Apart from 15 Cabinet ministers, 28 Ministers of State were sworn in at a ceremony held in the Darbar Hall of the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
This is the first reshuffle in the Council of Ministers by PM Modi since he took charge for a second term in May 2019.
Health Minister Vardhan, whose handling of the COVID-19 crisis drew flak from the opposition, resigned from the Union Council of Ministers just hours before the expansion.
The Cabinet reshuffle follows a long deliberation exercise that was carried out at the party level, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired an over-five-hour meeting on 30 June to decide on new inductees and those who could be dropped.
Here’s the full list of Modi’s new Council of Ministers, as released by the Rashtrapati Bhavan:
