New Delhi: As many as 37 ministers have been dropped from the government in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's third term and these include seven with cabinet rank -- prominent among them being Smriti Irani, Anurag Thakur and Narayan Rane. Parshottam Rupala, Arjun Munda, RK Singh and Mahendra Natha Pandey, also held cabinet positions in the second Modi government but were not retained in the Council of Ministers that took oath on Sunday.
While all three Ministers with Independent Charge have been retained, out of 42 ministers of state, 30 have been dropped. Those who have not been repeated include VK Singh, Faggansingh Kulaste, Ashwini Choubey, Danve Raosaheb Dadarao, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, Sanjeev Balyan, Rajeev Chandrashekhar, Subhas Sarkar, Nisith Pramanik, Rajkumar Ranjan Singh and Pratima Bhoumik.
Meenakshi Lekhi, Munjapara Mahendrabhai, Ajay Kumar Mishra, Kailash Choudhary, Kapil Moreshwar Patil, Bharati Pravin Pawar, Kaushal Kishore, Bhagwanth Khubha and V. Muraleedharan have also not been retained. Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma, John Barla, Bishweswar Tudu, Bhagwat Kishanrao Karad, Devusinh Chauhan, Ajay Bhatt, A. Narayanaswamy, Som Parkash, Rameswar Teli and Darshana Vikram Jardosh have also not made it to the new Council of Ministers.
Eighteen of the dropped ministers had lost the elections. L Murugan is the only Minister of State from the previous government who lost the election but has been retained. He is already a member of the Rajya Sabha. Smriti Irani, a Cabinet Minister in both terms of the Modi government, lost the election from Amethi to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's aide Kishori Lal Sharma by a margin of over 1.69 lakh votes.
Irani was HRD Minister and Textile Minister in the first term while she held Women and Child Development and Minority Affairs portfolios in Modi 2.0. Parshottam Rupala was the Minister of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying in the previous government. Rupala, who found himself in the eye of a storm kicked off by his allegedly derogatory remarks about the Kshatriya community ahead of elections, eventually emerged unscathed as he won Gujarat's Rajkot Lok Sabha seat with a record margin of around five lakh votes.
His deputy in the Fisheries Ministry, Sanjeev Kumar Balyan has also been dropped. Balyan, a two-time MP from Muzaffarnagar, lost the seat by over 24,000 votes this time. Anurag Thakur, who won for the fifth consecutive time from the Hamirpur Lok Sabha constituency, held the dual charge of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, in Modi 2.0.
Mahendra Nath Pandey, Minister of Heavy Industries, was seeking a hat-trick from Chandauli but lost to Samajwadi Party's Birendra Singh. Raj Kumar Singh, earlier the Union minister for power and renewable energy, lost the seat in Bihar's Arrah to CPI(ML)-Liberation's Sudama Prasad by 59,808 votes.
Narayan Rane, who was the MSME Minister, wrested Ratnagiri- Sindhudurg Lok Sabha constituency from the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena in a prestige battle. This is the first time the BJP has won a Parliamentary seat in the coastal Konkan region, a traditional stronghold of the Shiv Sena (Undivided).
Former Maharashtra CM Rane joined the BJP in 2019 and was nominated to Rajya Sabha. This was his debut Lok Sabha election. Rajeev Chandrashekhar, who was the Minister of State for Skill Development, Electronics and IT and Jalshakti, lost the election from Thiruvananthapuram to sitting Congress MP Shashi Tharoor.
"Today curtains down on my 18-year stint of public service of which 3 years I had the privilege to serve with PM @narendramodi ji's TeamModi2.0. I certainly didn't intend to end my 18 years of public service as a candidate who lost an election but that's how its turned out. "My deepest thanks to all those I met, all those who supported me - and in particular all those karyakartas and leaders who so inspired and energized me. Thanks also to my colleagues in govt over last 3 years," Chandrashekhar wrote on X.
Former Union minister of state for sport and youth affairs Nisith Pramanik lost the Cooch Behar seat in West Bengal to TMC's Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia by 39,250 votes. Subhas Sarkar, who was MoS Education in the Modi 2.0 government, lost the Bankura seat to Trinamool Congress's Arup Chakraborty by 32,778 votes.
