Modi's council of ministers

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday evening took oath along with 45-member council of ministers.

The council of ministers included 23 Cabinet ministers, 10 ministers of state with independent charge and 13 ministers of state.

However, the Rashtrapati Bhavan announced the portfolios only on Tuesday.

PM Modi keeps with himself personnel, public grievances and pensions, department of atomic energy and department of space portfolios, and is also inc-charge of all important policy issues and all other portfolios not allocated to any minister.

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The BJP president gets the all-important Home portfolio.

Singh, the teacher-turned politician, is returning to government in a seamless journey from a party president, under whose stewardship the BJP has returned to power with highest ever tally.

62-year-old Singh, who steadfastly announced Modi's name as BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate despite opposition from seniors like L K Advani, is going to be one of the trusted lieutenants of Prime Minister Modi with a major say in the functioning of the government.

Singh, a two-term BJP president, rose from a BJP activists in Gorakhpur, where he taught physics in a local college, to Chief Minister of politically crucial Uttar Pradesh and then Transport and Agriculture Minister in Atal Bihar Vajpayee government.

His rise in politics has been gradual and steady during which he had been BJP chief from 2006 to 2009 and earned the reputation of being an able administrator as Union Minister and Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh.

Elected to Lok Sabha from Lucknow, Singh has emerged from the ranks as a political heavyweight in the party largely due to his proximity to BJP's spiritual mentor RSS.

After taking over BJP's reins for the first time from Advani in December 2005, Singh sought to rebuild the party by focusing on basic Hindutva ideologies and said there would be "no compromise" on building the Ram Temple in Ayodhya.

However, he not only failed to steer the party to power in the 2009 general elections but BJP's poll tally dropped by 22 seats compared to 2004 Lok Sabha polls.

Born on July 10, 1951 at Bhabhaura village in Uttar Pradesh's Chandauli district, Singh obtained MSc in physics from Gorakhpur University and was appointed lecturer in the K B Post degree college in Mirzapur in 1971.

Singh's association with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh began in 1964 when he was only 13 year old. Even as lecturer he remained attached to RSS.

Rising step by step, he began his political innings with BJP's student wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad in 1969 as its organising secretary in Gorakhpur and rose to become the secretary of the then Bharatiya Jan Sangh's Mirzapur unit in 1974.

During the Emergency, Singh joined Jaiprakash Narayan's movement and was arrested in July 1975 before being released in 1977.

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Arun Jaitley, Cabinet minister

The senior BJP leader gets Finance, Corporate Affairs and Defence.

Few people in the central leadership of BJP could claim to have the ears of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Arun Jaitley can.

Jaitley, 61, defended Modi vigrously when future appeared uncertain for the then Gujarat Chief Minister following 2002 riots and played a crucial rule in his rise to the top when voices of discontent, led by the likes L K Advani, grew louder.

And it is also an evidence of Modi's faith in him that despite his loss in Lok Sabha elections, the legal luminary was always being seen as a certainty in the Modi cabinet for a high profile ministry.

More of a strategist than a grassroots politician, Jaitley was a key helmsman in the party's 2014 campaign, now being recognised for its brilliance by even opponents, and was its key voice as the Modi juggernaut rolled on.

Through his blogposts, he keenly defended the personalised electioneering around Modi when other veterans like Sushma Swaraj, Murli Manohar Joshi besides Advani seemed to demur and even took gentle swipes at party leaders, including Sushma, when they disapproved of inclusion of tainted leaders like B S Yeddyurappa.

His detractors, though, would say his adroit political calculations were of not much personal help. He chose to fight his maiden Lok Sabha election from Amritsar and lost to Congress bigwig Amarinder Singh.

In the first BJP government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Jaitley was appointed Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting (Independent Charge) and later headed Disinvestment ministry (Independent Charge), a new ministry created for to give effect to the policy of disinvestments.

He was the first Minister of Shipping following the bifurcation of the Ministry of Surface Transport and later headed Law & Justice where he gave shape to the policy of judicial reforms.

Seen as an articulate face of the party who is as much at ease in advocating market reforms as defending the traditional, at times orthodox, world view of the larger Sangh parivar, the senior Supreme Court lawyer at heart is a modernist who shares Modi's dictum of "minimum government, maximum governance".

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Ananth Kumar, Cabinet minister

The BJP MP from Bangalore South gets chemical and fertilisers portfolio.

Kumar, once considered close to party patriarch L K Advani, is from the RSS stable and is known for his political adroitness with his ears close to the ground.

Kumar became a sixth time Lok Sabha member from Bangalore South, defeating Congress candidate and IT Czar Nandan Nilekani by a margin of 2,28,575 votes in what had appeared to be a keen contest that would throw up a challenge to him.

Born in a middleclass Brahmin family on 22 July 1959, 55- year-old Kumar is a Law graduate from Mysore University.

Kumar, who was also actively involved with Akhila Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, has served in various positions including as State Secretary and later National Secretary of the Parishad in 1985.

Joining BJP in 1987, Kumar served as State President of BJP Yuva Morcha in his first assignment. He was appointed as General Secretary of the party in 1995 and got elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 1996 from Bangalore South and not looked back in his parliamentary career since then.

Kumar served as Minister for Civil Aviation in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee cabinet. He had also seved in various ministeries like Tourism, Sports & Youth Affairs, Culture, Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation during the NDA rule.

Gregarious with strong political instincts, Kumar has managed to be in the innner circle of central leadership- be it during the heydays of Vajpayee or Advani and now Modi.

Both Kumar and BJP strongman Yeddyurappa are known for their politically hostile relationship and he often faced accusations of meddling too much in Karnataka affairs particularly when the Lingayat strongman was Chief Minister.

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Hats off to you for bringing out this wonderful piece of information about PM Narendra Modi council of ministers along with their bio-data, political background, experience etc. You have done a great job in being objective e.g. in the case of Gen. (Retd.) V.K. Singh. Photographs given with the write-up are an icing on the cake. Thanks and Regards.