From Scindia to Nisith Pramanik, know some prominent faces in new Union Cabinet

Prominent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders like Narayan Rane, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sarbananda Sonowal and Pashupati Kumar Paras were among those who took the oath. The Cabinet expansion comes ahead of key assembly elections lined up next year.

Hyderabad: As many as 43 leaders took oath as ministers in the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Union Cabinet on Wednesday evening. This includes 36 new faces and seven Ministers of State who were elevated. The most notable inclusion has been Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sarbananda Sonowal and Narayan Rane among others. This is the first cabinet reshuffle since the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) retained power in 2019.

Here are the details of some of the new faces inducted into the Union Cabinet

• Narayan Rane
  

  Narayan Rane

He is a member of the Rajya Sabha from Maharashtra. He joined BJP in 2019 and his party Maharashtra Swabhiman paksha was also merged into BJP. Rane joined Shiv Sena in his early twenties and started his political career as local Shakha Pramukh at Chembur, Mumbai. Then he became the Councillor of Kopargaon. In 1999, when Manohar Joshi stepped down from the post of Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Rane succeeded him. He later joined the Indian National Congress and was made the Revenue Minister of Maharashtra.

• Sarbananda Sonowal
  

  Sarbananda Sonowal

He was the President of All Assam Student Union (AASU) from 1992 to 1999. In 2001, he was elected as an MLA of the Asom Gana Parishad party from the Moran constituency. He is credited with successfully challenging the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act, which was struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 2005. He then forayed into national politics and got elected as an MP three years later, during which he represented the Dibrugarh constituency. In 2011, he joined the BJP. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, when the Modi wave swept the country, Sonowal was elected as the MP from the Lakhimpur constituency. In Modi's first term as the Prime Minister, he served as the Minister of Sports and Youth Affairs. He was also made the president of the Assam unit of the BJP. Ahead of the 2016 assembly polls, Sonowal was made the BJP's CM face in Assam. Recently, the BJP opted for a change of guard in Assam, picking Himanta Biswa Sarma over incumbent Sonowal as the new chief minister.

• Dr Virendra Kumar
  

  Dr Virendra Kumar

Dr Virendra Kumar Khatik, a member of parliament from Tikamgarh in the 17th Lok Sabha, was inducted into Prime Minister Narendra Modi‘s new team. Khatik has been an MP six times; for the first four times from the Sagar Constituency, and for the rest from Tikamgarh in Madhya Pradesh. He was also the chairperson of the Standing Committee on Labour and Member of General Purpose Committee. He was chosen as the Pro-tem speaker of the 17th Lok Sabha in June 2019. He has in the past served as Union Minister of State for Women & Child Development and Minority Affairs under PM Narendra Modi. Kumar, in his youth, was part of the JP movement and was jailed for 16 months for protesting against the emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi.

• Jyotiraditya Scindia
  

  Jyotiraditya Scindia

The Congress defector held several ministerial posts in the UPA government. The Rajya Sabha MP from Madhya Pradesh had cited disgruntlement with the INC leadership while leaving the party in 2020. He was elected from Guna in 2014 but lost the seat to Krishna Pal Singh Yadav in 2019. In a Cabinet reshuffle in November 2012, Scindia was appointed Minister of State for Power. In 2009, he was appointed Minister of State for Commerce and Industry after getting re-elected for the third consecutive time. His entry into mainstream politics was marked by his father's death. Scindia is the descendant of Gwalior Maharajah who ruled the princely state before 1947.

• Pashupati Kumar Paras
  

  Pashupati Kumar Paras

He is the younger brother of the late Ram Vilas Paswan, the founder of Lok Janshakti Party (LJP). He was also the state president of the Bihar unit of LJP. Paras won his first assembly election in 1977 as a JNP candidate from Alauli. He won the 2019 parliamentary elections from Hajipur and became a parliamentarian. Last month, he was elected, unopposed, the national president of the party, replacing Chirag Kumar Paswan, Ram Vilas Paswan's son. In his political stint, Paras has been a member of the Standing Committee on Defence, Committee on Government Assurances, Standing Committee on Social Justice and Empowerment, and a member of the Consultative Committee in the Ministry of Railways.

• Raj Kumar Singh
  

  Raj Kumar Singh

Bureaucrat-turned politician Raj Kumar Singh who steered Modi government's power sector reforms agenda that made India surplus in electricity was elevated as a Cabinet Minister from Minister of State rank. During his tenure, he managed the power grid and bring reforms in the distribution sector which has been debt-laden for years. Besides, Singh also worked in the area of clean energy to boost capacity addition of renewables like solar and wind. 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. He was also Home Secretary, Government of Bihar, from 1997 to 1999. He became Joint Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, (2000 to 2005).

• Bhupender Yadav
  

  Bhupender Yadav

Rajya Sabha MP Bhupender Yadav sworn in as Union Minister as part of the first Cabinet expansion of the second term of Prime Miniter Narendra Modi-led Central government. 52-year-old Yadav is a Rajya Sabha MP from Rajasthan and is serving his second term. He is known for his leadership across many Parliamentary Committees. Prior to beginning his political career, he was an Advocate in the Supreme Court and also served as Government Counsel for important Commissions. From 2000-2009, Yadav was General Secretary, All India Lawyers Organisation (Akhil Bharatiya Adhivakta Parishad) and National Secretary, Bharatiya Janata Party in 2010. He attended many conferences on various legal topics both at the national and international levels. He became National General Secretary, BJP in 2014; Prabhari (in-charge), Bihar, Gujarat and Maharashtra State Election Management Department, BJP and was Member, Joint Parliamentary Committee on Security in Parliament Complex.

• Anupriya Patel
  

  Anupriya Patel

She is an MP in Lok Sabha from the Mirzapur constituency. She was the Minister of State in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, from 2016 to 2019. She is the daughter of Sone Lal Patel, who founded the Apna Dal political party that is based in Uttar Pradesh. She was previously elected as a Member of the Legislative Assembly for the Rohaniya constituency of the Legislature of Uttar Pradesh in Varanasi, where she had fought a campaign in alliance with the Peace Party of India and Bundelkhand Congress in the 2012 Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly election. Patel has been president of Apna Dal since the death of her father in October 2009.

• Shobha Karandlaje
  

  Shobha Karandlaje

She is an MP representing Udupi Chikmagalur Lok Sabha Constituency. She is currently the Vice President of Bharatiya Janata Party, Karnataka. Hailing from Puttur in Coastal Karnataka, Shobha became associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh at a very early age, one of the many women full-time workers of the RSS. She served the BJP organisation in various capacities before being elected as an MLC in 2004. She was elected as MLA from Yeswanthpur, Bangalore in May 2008 and was appointed as the Minister for Rural Development and Panchayat Raj in the BS Yeddyurappa govt.

• Meenakshi Lekhi
  

  Meenakshi Lekhi

She is an MP from the New Delhi constituency and the chairperson of the Committee on Privileges of the Lok Sabha. She is also the chairperson of the parliamentary committee on Public Undertaking. She is also a lawyer in the Supreme Court of India. Besides writing articles in journals, periodicals and newspapers on socio-political issues, she participates in various television shows on matters on national and international importance. She has also distinguished herself as an active participant in the various parliamentary processes and was awarded with the "Best Debut Women Parliamentarian" award by Lokmat in 2017.

• Ajay Bhatt
  

  Ajay Bhatt

He is an MP in Lok Sabha representing the Nainital-Udham Singh Nagar constituency. He has served as the Leader of the Opposition in the Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly before state elections in 2017. He held several portfolios in the Government of Uttarakhand as a Minister. He is regarded as one of the senior-most BJP leaders of Uttarakhand. He has also served as MLA from Ranikhet Legislative Assembly.

• Rajeev Chandrasekhar
  

  Rajeev Chandrasekhar

He is a member of the Rajya Sabha from Karnataka and the National Spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Presently Chandrasekhar serves as Member of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, Member of Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Member of the Joint Committee on Data Protection Bill, 2019 and Member of the Consultative Committee on MoE & IT, Ministry of Communications, Member of the Indian Council for World Affairs. He is also an entrepreneur and founder of the Board of Jupiter Capital Pvt. Ltd.

• Ramchandra Prasad Singh
  

  Ramchandra Prasad Singh

Bureaucrat, politician and now minister, Ramchandra Prasad Singh's meteoric rise began when he caught Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's attention. Hailing from Nalanda district RCP, as he is often known, took the oath of office as Union Cabinet minister. He entered Kumar's good books in the late 1990s when the then Samata Party leader was the Union Railway Minister and the Uttar Pradesh cadre IAS officer was on a central deputation. Impressed by Singh's abilities, Kumar borrowed him from the UP cadre and appointed him as his principal secretary after becoming the chief minister of Bihar. However, Kumar seemed to have bigger plans for the 63-year-old Singh, who made his political debut in 2010, getting elected to the Rajya Sabha on a JD(U) ticket after taking premature retirement from the civil service.

• Nisith Pramanik
  

  Nisith Pramanik

The youngest of them all, 35-year-old Nisith Pramanik is a first-time MP from Cooch Behar Lok Sabha constituency in West Bengal. Pramanik started his political career as a youth leader of the Trinamool Congress (TMC). He was also fielded by BJP in the assembly elections held this year where he won. However, after the election results, he resigned from the post of MLA. He earlier worked as an assistant teacher in a primary school.

• John Barla
  

  John Barla

Born in Jalpaiguri in 1975, a first-time MP from Alipurduars in West Bengal, John Barla has worked extensively for the rights of tea-garden workers in North Bengal and Assam for two decades. He had himself started off as a tea garden worker at the age of 14. The Bengal parliamentarian has been in the news recently for demanding a separate Union Territory carved out of North Bengal, alleging that the region was overlooked over the years.