‘Wish them best for their ministerial tenure’: PM Modi congratulates new cabinet colleagues

“I congratulate all the colleagues who have taken oath today and wish them the very best for their ministerial tenure," Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday greeted the new ministers who were administered their oath of office on the day. Modi’s message to the ministers came following a reshuffle of the cabinet earlier in the day.

President Ram Nath Kovind, First Lady Savita Kovind, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla in a group photograph with the newly sworn-in Council of Ministers at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. (PTI)

“I congratulate all the colleagues who have taken oath today and wish them the very best for their ministerial tenure. We will continue working to fulfil aspirations of the people and build a strong and prosperous India,” Modi tweeted.

Following the expansion of the Union cabinet announced by the PM, 43 new ministers, including 15 cabinet ministers and 28 ministers of state, were appointed as members of the Council of Ministers. President Ram Nath Kovind administered the oath of office to the new ministers in a ceremony held at the Rashtrapati Bhavan earlier in the day.

Also, on Tuesday, the Union government carved out a new ministry called the ministry of cooperation, aimed at providing a separate, administrative, legal and policy framework for strengthening the cooperative movement in the country. “The Ministry will work to streamline processes for ‘Ease of doing business’ for co-operatives and enable development of Multi-State Co-operatives (MSCS),” the cabinet secretariat said in a statement released previously on Tuesday.

The cabinet expansion is the first since the Modi-led government came back to power in the 2019 parliamentary elections. Jyotiraditya Scindia, who joined the BJP from Congress last year, Rajya Sabha MP and former bureaucrat Ashwini Vaishnaw, former Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal were among the new entrants in the cabinet.

Meanwhile, former Union ministers Harsh Vardhan, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Sadananda Gowda and Prakash Javadekar, tendered their resignations before the expansion was announced.

New portfolios have also been allocated to the ministers on the day, according to which, Mansukh Mandaviya took charge as the minister of health and family welfare and also as the minister of chemicals and fertilizers. Scindia was allotted the ministry of civil aviation while Vaishnaw got the ministry of railways, ministry of communications and the ministry of electronics and information technology.

Union home minister Amit Shah took additional charge of the new ministry of cooperation along with the home affairs ministry. Also, Rajnath Singh and Nirmala Sitharaman too retained their respective ministries of defence and finance.