Modi 3.0 Cabinet: With Big 4 Portfolios Unchanged, BJP Opts For Continuity

Finance, External Affairs, Defence and Home - BJP has retained the top ministries with no major changes in key cabinet portfolios from the outgoing NDA government.

New Delhi: The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government announced the portfolios of cabinet ministers on Monday which shows that continuity is the cornerstone of the newly formed Modi 3.0 ministry. The new Union Council of Ministers headed by PM Narendra Modi carries very minimum changes.

The Saffron party has made no changes to the top Ministries like Finance, External Affairs, Defence and Home, and these portfolios were given to the same leaders. The party has reassigned Rajnath Singh as Defence Minister, Amit Shah as Home Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman as Finance Minister and S Jaishankar as External Affairs Minister. This also means that there are no changes in the composition of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), a crucial body chaired by the PM. It's responsible for appointing members to national security bodies and making decisions on matters related to national security and defence expenditure.

Some of the key changes included party chief JP Nadda bagging the portfolio of health and family welfare in addition to chemicals and fertilisers.  Nadda was the health minister in 2014 as well. Former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh Shivraj Singh Chouhan got agriculture and rural development while Manohar Lal Khattar, Haryana's ex chief minister got power and housing and urban affairs. Both were replaced as CMs in their respective states. Apart from this, former Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia who won from Guna seat of Madhya Pradesh, has now been given charge of telecommunications and development of the North East Region, while Bhupender Yadav retained his portfolio as environment minister in the third Narendra Modi government.

However, the party has also made a few significant changes in cabinet formation. Two names in the former cabinet who were dropped from Modi 3.0 cabinet includes Smriti Irani and Anurag Thakur. Smriti Irani contested the Lok Sabha election from Uttar Pradesh's Amethi, but she was defeated by a margin of over 1.6 lakh votes by Congress' Kishori Lal Sharma. Anurag Thakur secured a victory in the general election from Hamirpur in Himachal Pradesh, but he has also not been included in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's latest Union Cabinet.