UP gets biggest slice of Modi ministries, followed by Maharashtra & Bihar

States going to assembly polls this year — Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand — got a total of 10 ministers in the Modi govt, including 4 cabinet posts.

Sadananda Gowda, Nirmala Sitharaman and other NDA leaders before taking oath as Union ministers, during the swearing-in ceremony at the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhawan | Photo: PTI

New Delhi: With 10 ministers, Uttar Pradesh has got the largest representation in Narendra Modi’s new 58-member council of ministers. There are 25 ministers of cabinet rank, including Prime Minister Modi, nine Ministers of State with Independent Charge, and 24 Ministers of State.

One cabinet minister — former foreign secretary S. Jaishankar — is not a Member of Parliament yet.

In Modi’s first council of ministers, 13 ministers, including the PM, had represented Uttar Pradesh — politically, India’s largest state with 80 Lok Sabha MPs.

States going to assembly polls later in the year — Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand — have also got ample representation. Maharashtra got six ministers, including three with cabinet rank, Haryana got three, including one MoS with independent charge, while Jharkhand has got one cabinet minister, former CM Arjun Munda.

Bihar, which goes to the polls in 2020, has got six ministers, including two cabinet ministers — Ravi Shankar Prasad and Giriraj Singh. JD(U), the BJP’s coalition partner in Bihar, refused to join the cabinet as its demand for three ministerial berths was not accepted.

Two states — West Bengal and Odisha — where BJP exceeded expectations with a combined tally of 25 seats, were also rewarded. West Bengal got two ministers, Babul Supriyo and Debasree Chaudhuri, while Odisha got one minister in Balasore MP Pratap Sarangi. Sundargarh MP Jual Oram, who was tribal affairs minister in the previous Modi cabinet, was dropped.

The BJP accommodated only four of its allies: Shiromani Akali Dal’s Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Lok Janshakti Party’s Ram Vilas Paswan and Shiv Sena’s Arvind Sawant got cabinet berths, while the Republican Party of India’s Ramdas Athawale was given an MoS berth with independent charge.

Which state got what

Uttar Pradesh: 10

Narendra Modi

Rajnath Singh

Smriti Irani

Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi (Rajya Sabha)

Mahendra Nath Pandey

Hardeep Singh Puri (Rajya Sabha)

Santosh Gangwar

V.K. Singh

Sanjeev Balyan

Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti

Maharashtra: 6

Nitin Gadkari

Piyush Goyal (Rajya Sabha)

Arvind Sawant (Shiv Sena)

Ramdas Athawale

Sanjay Shamrao Dhotre

Raosaheb Dadarao Danve

Bihar: 6

Ravi Shankar Prasad

Ram Vilas Paswan (Lok Janshakti Party)

Giriraj Singh

R.K. Singh

Ashwini Kumar Choubey

Nityanand Rai

Madhya Pradesh: 4

Prakash Javadekar (Rajya Sabha)

Thaawarchand Gehlot (Rajya Sabha)

Faggan Singh Kulaste

Prahalad Singh Patel

Karnataka: 4

Nirmala Sitharaman (Rajya Sabha)

D.V. Sadananda Gowda

Pralhad Joshi

Suresh Angadi

Gujarat: 3

Amit Shah

Mansukh Mandaviya

Parshottam Rupala

Rajasthan: 3

Arjun Ram Meghwal

Gajendra Singh Shekhawat

Kailash Choudhary

Haryana: 3

Rao Inderjit Singh

Krishan Pal Gurjar

Rattan Lal Kataria

Bengal: 2

Babul Supriyo

Debasree Chaudhuri

Punjab:2

Harsimrat Kaur Badal (Shiromani Akali Dal)

Som Parkash

Odisha: 2

Dharmendra Pradhan (Rajya Sabha)

Pratap Sarangi

Assam: 1

Rameswar Teli

Chhattisgarh: 1

Renuka Singh

Telangana: 1

G. Kishan Reddy

Kerala: 1

V. Muraleedharan

Himachal Pradesh: 1

Anurag Thakur

Uttarakhand: 1

Ramesh Pokhriyal

Jammu & Kashmir: 1

Jitendra Singh

Goa: 1

Shripada Yesso Naik

Arunachal Pradesh: 1

Kiren Rijiju

Delhi: 1

Harsh Vardhan

Jharkhand: 1

Arjun Munda