Forty-three ministers took oath Wednesday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi expanded his cabinet. While 36 new faces were added to the cabinet, 12 ministers, including veterans like Dr Harsh Vardhan, Ravi Shankar Prasad, and Prakash Javadekar, resigned from their posts. The reshuffle comes amid sharp criticism of the government over the handling of the second wave of the pandemic.

The new cabinet has 11 women ministers — nine ministers of state and two cabinet ministers. While Nirmala Sitharaman and Smriti Zubin Irani have been retained, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti and Renuka Singh Saruta will also continue to be ministers of state. The seven new women ministers of state are — Karandlaje, Darshana Vikram Jardosh, Lekhi, Annapurna Devi, Pratima Bhoumik, Dr Bharati Pravin Pawar and Anupriya Singh Patel.

Here are the ministers in the new Modi cabinet:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Portfolios: Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions; Department of Atomic Energy; Department of Space

Prime Minister and member of Lok Sabha from Varanasi, PM Modi will head all the portfolios that have not been allocated to any minister, besides Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions; Department of Atomic Energy; Department of Space. He is the 14th Prime Minister of India and has served as the Chief Minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014.

CABINET MINISTERS

Amit Shah

Portfolios: Minister of Home Affairs; and Minister of Cooperation

Lok Sabha MP from Gandhinagar, Shah will continue as the Union Home Minister. He has served as the President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from 2014 to 2020.

Rajnath Singh

Portfolio: Minister of Defence

Lok Sabha MP from Lucknow, Rajnath Singh has been retained as the Defence Minister of India. He has previously served as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and as a Cabinet Minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. He was the Home Minister during the first term of PM Modi.

Nitin Gadkari

Portfolios: Minister of Road Transport and Highways

Lok Sabha MP from Nagpur, Gadkari held both Road Transport & Highways and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises ministries in the previous cabinet. He had served as the Public Works Department Minister in Maharashtra. He was also the BJP president from 2009 to 2013.

Nirmala Sitharaman

Portfolios: Minister of Finance; and Minister of Corporate Affairs

Member of the Rajya Sabha, Nirmala Sitharaman will continue to be the Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs of India. She is the second woman finance minister after former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who handled the Finance portfolio between 1969 and 1971. Earlier, she served as the Defence Minister of India.

S Jaishankar

Portfolio: Minister of External Affairs

(PTI Photo)

Rajya Sabha member S Jainshankar will remain the Minister of External Affairs. He was given the portfolio on May 31, 2019, after PM Modi won the second term in office. He is a seasoned diplomat.

Piyush Goyal

Portfolio: Minister of Commerce and Industry; Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution; and Minister of Textiles

Member of Rajya Sabha, Piyush Goyal was the minister of Railways, Commerce and Industry, and Consumer Affairs and Food and Public Distribution in the previous cabinet. He held Railways and Coal between 2017 and 2019. He also held additional charge of the Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs twice in 2018 and 2019.

Narendra Singh Tomar

Portfolio: Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare

Member of Lok Sabha from Morena, Madhya Pradesh, Tomar is the Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare. He previously held the Ministry of Mines and the Ministry of Parliamentary Affair in the Government of India.

Smriti Zubin Irani

Portfolio: Minister of Women and Child Development

Member of Lok Sabha from Amethi, Uttar Pradesh, Irani served as the textile minister. In 2019, she defeated Rahul Gandhi to win the seat, which was considered to be a Congress bastion.

Dharmendra Pradhan

Portfolio: Minister of Education; and Minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship

Rajya Sabha MP Dharmendra Pradhan, who was in charge of the petroleum ministry till now has been given the Education portfolio. He replaces Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank'. Pradhan has been the longest-serving Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas in India.

Hardeep Singh Puri

Portfolio: Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas; and Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs

Member of Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh, Puri had been handling the Civil Aviation ministry. In 2018, he was elected to the Rajya Sabha unopposed after the seat fell vacant following the resignation of Manohar Parrikar, who quit to return to Goa as its Chief Minister.

Bhupender Yadav

Portfolio: Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change; and Minister of Labour and Employment

Rajya Sabha MP from Rajasthan, Bhupender Yadav is credited for strategising many wins for the BJP, including the Assembly elections of Rajasthan (2013), Gujarat (2017) and Uttar Pradesh (2017).

Virendra Kumar Khatik

Portfolio: Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment

Member of Lok Sabha from Tikamgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Khatik is a seven-time parliamentarian. He has returned to the Union Council of Ministers after a gap of two years. He had earlier served as Union Minister of State for Women and Child Development and Minority Affairs.

Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi

Portfolio: Minister of Minority Affairs

(Photo: IANS/PIB)

Member of Rajya Sabha, Naqvi became the Minister of State for Minority Affairs and Parliamentary Affairs on May 26, 2014. After the resignation of Najma Heptulla on July 12, 2016, he got independent charge of the Ministry of Minority Affairs.

Shandilya Giriraj Singh

Portfolio: Minister of Rural Development; and Minister of Panchayati Raj

Member of Parliament from Begusarai, Bihar, Singh served as the Minister of Cooperative, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries Resource Development in Bihar.

Sarbananda Sonowal

Portfolio: Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways; and Minister of AYUSH

Former Assam Chief Minister, Sonowal joined the BJP in 2011. Earlier this year, when Assam polls were announced, the BJP decided not to project him as the chief ministerial face. After BJP won the state, Himanta Biswa Sarma was made the CM and Sonowal was called to Delhi.

Jyotiraditya Scindia

Portfolio: Minister of Civil Aviation

(Photo: IANS)

Member of Rajya Sabha, Jyotiraditya Scindia bid adieu to Congress in March 2020 to join the BJP. He was a minister in the Manmohan Singh government as well. He is the son of Congress leader Madhavrao Scindia, who also held Civil Aviation as a cabinet minister.

Kiren Rijiju

Portfolio: Minister of Law and Justice

Member of Lok Sabha from Arunachal West, Rijiju was earlier the Union Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports. He has also served as a Minister of State for Home Affairs.

Arjun Munda

Portfolio: Minister of Tribal Affairs

Member of Lok Sabha from Khunti, Jharkhand, Munda is the Minister of Tribal Affairs. He has been the Chief Minister of Jharkhand.

Mansukh L Mandaviya

Portfolio: Minister of Health and Family Welfare; and Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers

Member of Rajya Sabha, Mandaviya was given the charge of the Shipping Ministry as Minister of State (Independent Charge) in 2019. Mandaviya, who hails from the Bhavnagar district in Gujarat, is a businessman, agriculturist, political and social worker.

Mahendra Nath Pandey

Portfolio: Minister of Heavy Industries

Member of Lok Sabha from Chandauli, Uttar Pradesh, Mahendra Nath Pandey had under him the Minister for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship since 2014.

Pralhad Joshi

Portfolio: Minister of Parliamentary Affairs; Minister of Coal; and Minister of Mines

Member of Lok Sabha from Dharwad, Karnataka, Pralhad Joshi was sworn in as a cabinet minister on May 30, 2019, after Narendra Modi won the second term in office.

Anurag Thakur

Portfolio: Minister of Information and Broadcasting; and Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports

The son of former Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh Prem Kumar Dhumal, the 46-year-old has won Hamirpur four times since 2008. He was a junior minister of finance and corporate affairs in the previous cabinet.

Parshottam Rupala

Portfolio: Minister of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying

(Photo: IANS)

The 66-year-old was earlier the Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare. He has been a Rajya Sabha member since 2016.

Gajendra Singh Shekhawat

Portfolio: Minister of Jal Shakti

(Photo: IANS)

Jodhpur MP in the Lok Sabha was appointed as the Union Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare in September 2017.

Ashwini Vaishnav

Portfolio: Minister of Railways; Minister of Communications; and Minister of Electronics and Information Technology

The 51-year-old bureaucrat-turned-politician is a 1994-batch IAS officer from Odisha cadre. Vaishnav rose to prominence for his work when the state was hit by a super cyclone in 1999.

G Kishan Reddy

Portfolio: Minister of Culture; Minister of Tourism; and Minister of Development of North Eastern Region

(Photo: IANS)

The 61-year-old has been the Minister of State for Home Affairs. He was elected as a Member of Parliament to 17th Lok Sabha, in 2019, from Secunderabad Constituency, Telangana.

Narayan Rane

Portfolio: Minister of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises

Member of Rajya Sabha, Narayan Rane has served as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra. He has been a six-time MLA and one-time MLC. He spent a long part of his political career in the Shiv Sena.

Raj Kumar Singh

Portfolio: Minister of Power, Minister of New and Renewable Energy

RK Singh, who has been elected twice to Lok Sabha in 2014 and 2019 from Arrah in Bihar, had become Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Power as well and New and Renewable Energy in September 2017. He held the two ministries till May 2019.

Ramchandra Pratap Singh - JD(U)

Portfolio: Minister of Steel

JD(U) Rajya Sabha MP from Bihar since 2010, Ram Chandra Prasad Singh is an IAS officer of the UP cadre. He also served as Bihar Chief Minister’s Nitish Kumar principal secretary.

Pashupati Nath Paras - LJP

Portfolio: Minister of Food Processing Industries

Lok Sabha MP from Hajipur (Bihar), Paras in Lok Janshakti Party founder Ram Vilas Paswan’s brother. Last month, he was in news for locking horns with his nephew Chirag Paswan over LJP leadership.