Bharatiya Janata Party leader Amit Shah on Monday retained the home affairs portfolio in the Union Cabinet, while party chief JP Nadda was given charge of the health and chemicals and fertilisers ministries.

Rajnath Singh will continue as the country’s defence minister. Nirmala Sitharaman was retained as the Union minister for finance and corporate affairs, and S Jaishankar will continue as the external affairs minister.

Modi retained the ministry of personnel, public grievances and pensions, the department of atomic energy, the space department and all portfolios not allocated to any minister.

The portfolios were announced on Monday, hours after the new Union Cabinet met for the first time.

Nitin Gadkari retained the road transport and highways ministry.

While former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan was allocated the agriculture and rural development ministries, former Haryana Chief Minister ML Khattar was given the power, and housing and urban development ministries.

Piyush Goyal retained the commerce ministry and Ashwini Vaishnaw will continue with his railways portfolio. Vaishnaw was also given the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and Electronics and Information Technology.

While Dharmendra Pradhan retained the education ministry, Mansukh Mandaviya was given the labour and employment ministry along with the youth affairs and sports portfolio.

Annpurna Devi will be the women and child development minister.

Kiren Rijiju was allocated the parliamentary affairs and minority affairs portfolios. Sarbananda Sonowal will be the minister of ports, shipping and waterways.

Narendra Modi on Sunday took oath as the prime minister for the third consecutive term with a 71-member Council of Ministers.

Allies’ portfolios

Eleven MPs belonging to the BJP’s allies in the National Democratic Alliance were inducted into the Union Council of Ministers on Sunday.

This included two MPs each from the Telugu Desam Party and the Janata Dal (United), and one each from the Janata Dal (Secular), Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) and the Hindustani Awam Morcha, among others.

Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party was given the civil aviation ministry. The portfolio was previously given to BJP’s Jyotiraditya Scindia, who is now the minister of communications and the minister of development of north eastern region.

Janata Dal (United)’s Lalan Singh was given the panchayati raj, and fisheries, animal husbandry and dairying portfolios.

Janata Dal (Secular) leader HD Kumaraswamy was made the minister of heavy industries and the minister of steel.

Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) leader Chirag Paswan was allocated the food processing industries ministry.

Jitan Ram Manjhi of the Hindustani Awam Morcha was allocated the micro, small and medium enterprises portfolio.

Follow Scroll’s Lok Sabha elections coverage here

On Sunday, BJP chief Nadda returned to the Modi Cabinet. While Nadda was the Union health minister during the first term of the Modi government, he was not part of the Cabinet during the second term.

Shah, Rajnath Singh, Gadkari and Goyal were among the 19 senior BJP leaders who were retained as Union ministers.

Shah was the Union home minister during the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance’s second term between 2019 and 2024 and the minister of co-operation from 2021 to 2024.

Shah’s tenure as the Union home minister was marked by the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution, which gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir, and the implementation of the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act. The Act fast-tracks Indian citizenship for refugees from six minority religious communities, except Muslims, from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Rajnath Singh was the defence minister during the Modi government’s second term and the Union home minister in the first term. During his tenure as the defence minister, tensions rose between India and China along the Line of Actual Control. A major face-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers in the Galwan Valley of Ladakh in June 2020 led to casualties on both sides – the first in many decades.

Rajnath Singh’s term as the defence minister was also marked by the introduction of the controversial Agnipath scheme for short-term recruitment to the armed forces. The introduction of the scheme had triggered protests across several states as aspirants demanded permanent recruitment with pension benefits.

Gadkari was the minister of road transport and highways in the Modi government’s first as well as the second term. His tenure was marked by the faster construction of highways as compared to the decade when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government was in power. However, critics have accused the government of inflating the numbers by shifting to a new formula that portrays the pace of construction in a better light.

Gadkari also held the portfolios of shipping and water resources, river development and Ganga rejuvenation in the Modi government’s first term.

Although Sitharaman, Jaishankar and Vaishnaw did not contest the Lok Sabha elections, they were also sworn in as Cabinet ministers.

Chouhan and Khattar were among the prominent state leaders of the BJP who were inducted into the Modi-led Union Cabinet on Sunday. Another former chief minister, Sarbananda Sonowal, was retained as a Union minister.

The BJP won 240 Lok Sabha seats in the general election, a significant dip from its tally of 303 seats in 2019. A party or alliance requires 272 seats in the 543-member Lower House of Parliament to form a government at the Centre.

With the BJP falling 32 seats short of the majority, it formed the Union government with the support of its partners in the National Democratic Alliance. The final tally of the National Democratic Alliance parties is 292 seats.

Also read: Smriti Irani, Anurag Thakur among 37 ministers dropped from Modi Cabinet