Modi 2.0 cabinet: old and new faces sworn in, portfolios to be announced

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new team has 58 members: Modi himself, 24 cabinet ministers, nine ministers of state with independent charge and 24 ministers of state. The first meeting of the new Union Cabinet was set for 5:30 pm on Friday, an official said, with portfolios still to be announced.

President Ram Nath Kovind administered the oath at a ceremony attended by leaders and representatives of BIMSTEC countries, as well as the Prime Minister of Mauritius and the President of Kyrgyzstan.

The cabinet ministers

• Rajnath Singh: Home Minister in Modi’s first term, a former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Vajpayee-era minister, and twice BJP president (2005 to 2009 and 2013 to 2014).
• Amit Shah: BJP president since 2014 and Modi’s close aide during his years as Gujarat Chief Minister.
• Nitin Gadkari: previously held portfolios including Shipping, Water Resources and Road Transport; BJP president from 2010-2013.
• D.V. Sadananda Gowda: former Karnataka Chief Minister whose inclusion surprised many observers in the state.
• Nirmala Sitharaman: Defence Minister from 2017 and India’s second woman in that post.
• Ram Vilas Paswan: eight-time Lok Sabha member and LJP president, who did not contest this time and is expected to enter Parliament via the Rajya Sabha.
• Ravi Shankar Prasad: elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time from Patna Sahib, defeating former BJP colleague Shatrughan Sinha, who ran for the Congress.
• Harsimrat Kaur Badal: Shiromani Akali Dal MP, elected a third straight time from Bathinda.
• S. Jaishankar: a former diplomat who was Foreign Secretary between January 2015 and January 2018; he earlier served as envoy to the Czech Republic (2001-04), Singapore (2007-09), China (2009-2013) and the US (2014-2015).
• Ramesh Pokhriyal: re-elected from Haridwar; at 50 he became Uttarakhand’s youngest Chief Minister, serving 2009 to 2011.
• Arjun Munda: three-time Jharkhand Chief Minister, 51, who won Khunti by 1,445 votes.
• Smriti Irani: defeated Congress president Rahul Gandhi in Amethi by about 55,000 votes, her first Lok Sabha win.
• Harsh Vardhan: two-time Chandni Chowk MP who won by more than 200,000 votes; Health Minister from 2014, with Environment added in 2017.
• Giriraj Singh: beat the CPI’s Kanhaiya Kumar in Begusarai by more than 420,000 votes.
• Gajendra Singh Shekhawat: defeated Vaibhav Gehlot, son of Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, by 270,440 votes.
• Arvind Sawant: Shiv Sena MP who beat the Congress’s Milind Deora by more than 100,000 votes.

Other cabinet ministers include Narendra Singh Tomar, Thaawarchand Gehlot, Prakash Javadekar, Piyush Goyal, who held additional charge of Finance and presented the interim budget, Dharmendra Pradhan, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Pralhad Joshi, a four-time MP from Dharwad, and Mahendra Nath Pandey, the Chandauli MP since 2014 and Uttar Pradesh BJP chief.

Ministers of state and those left out

Those sworn in as ministers of state include Anurag Thakur, Babul Supriyo, Arjun Meghwal, Ramdas Athawale, Faggan Singh Kulaste, General (Retd.) V K Singh, Sanjeev Balyan, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, Pratap Chandra Sarangi, Krishan Pal Gurjar and Raosaheb Danve Patil.

Several members of the previous government did not return, among them Suresh Prabhu, Maneka Gandhi, J P Nadda, Radha Mohan Singh, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and Satyapal Singh.

See also: Lok Sabha members.

Originally published on 31 May 2019. Rewritten on 9 October 2026.

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