RAJNATH SINGH

Experience

AMIT SHAH

Experience

S JAISHANKAR

No Parliamentary Experience

NITIN GADKARI

Experience

NIRMALA SITHARAMAN

Experience

HARSIMRAT KAUR BADAL

Experience

SMRITI IRANI

NARENDRA TOMAR

Experience

HARSH VARDHAN

DHARMENDRA PRADHAN

Experience

RAM VILAS PASWAN

PIYUSH GOYAL

Experience

PRAKASH JAVADEKAR

Experience

RAVI SHANKAR PRASAD

Experience

GAJENDRA SINGH SHEKHAWAT

Experience

GIRIRAJ SINGH

Experience

ARVIND SAWANT

Experience

PRALHAD JOSHI

Experience

MUKHTAR A NAQVI

Experience

MAHENDRA N PANDEY

Experience

RAMESH N POKHRIYAL

SADANANDA GOWDA

THAWARCHAND GEHLOT

Experience

ARJUN MUNDA

Experience

MINISTERS OF STATE (INDEPENDENT CHARGE)

Santosh Gangwar

Experience

Rao Inderjit Singh

Experience

Shripad Naik

Experience

Jitendra Singh

Experience

Kiren Rijiju

Experience

Prahlad Patel

Experience

Raj Kumar Singh

Experience

Hardeep Puri

Experience

Mansukh Mandaviya

Experience

MINISTERS OF STATE

| 67: 2 Lok Sabha, 2 Rajya Sabha TermsA seasoned politician of many decades and former party president, Rajnath Singh was instrumental in pitching for Narendra Modi as prime minister, as mandated by the RSS. In the last government, he was an efficient home minister who kept a low profile. He implemented the party’s tough line on terror, asking security agencies to act impartially on intelligence inputs. He also adopted a policy of rehabilitation for individuals who might have been radicalised, but had not yet committed a crime and were open to reconsidering their choices.As a former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, his presence will balance caste and regional equations in the top levels of government. He has experience as a political manager, having been drafted in to seal alliances and sort out inner-party crises in the past.| 54: 1 Rajya Sabha TermFrom a polling booth in-charge to heading the world’s largest political party to cabinet minister, the journey of BJP president Amit Anilchandra Shah has been stupendous to say the least.For 14 years in Gujarat, Shah was the most trusted lieutenant of then CM Narendra Modi. His career suffered a brief setback in 2010, when he, as the MoS home of Gujarat, was arrested in the Sohrabuddin Shaikh and Tulsiram Prajapati encounter cases. He was granted bail on the condition that he would stay away from Gujarat. But Shah used his time in Delhi to not just sort out his legal problems but also understand the nitty-gritty of national politics. After two years away, he was allowed to return in 2012. He was subsequently discharged of all charges. Perhaps the most crucial phase of Shah’s career began in 2013, when he was made general secretary of the BJP and was tapped to spearhead the 2014 general election campaign in Uttar Pradesh. Realising the importance of UP, Shah spent almost an entire year there, working on the minutest of details, which eventually gave the party and its allies 73 of the 80 LS seats in UP.Immediately after the 2014 LS polls, Shah was elevated to BJP president. In the first year of his tenure, the BJP won four of the five assembly elections held. Since then, with Modi at the helm of government and Amit Shah captaining the organisation that he transformed into a well-oiled electoral machine, the BJP has expanded its footprint across the country.Incidentally, Shah honed his political skills in his home state Gujarat, where he started as a booth manager in the Gandhinagar constituency – the seat which he won this year with a record margin of 5.57 lakh votes. When he’s not busy with politics, Shah likes playing chess and watching theatre. He also likes to learn new languages. His family continues to live in their house in Ahmedabad. Whenever he comes home, it’s his granddaughter Rudri who takes up most of his time.| 64F Former foreign secretary S Jaishankar’s induction in the Modi government as an MoS is hardly a surprise to foreign policy wonks. Jaishankar, son of the strategic affairs expert K Subrahmanyam, has been Modi’s go-to man on foreign policy since his Gujarat CM days. Jaishankar was then India’s ambassador to China, and the two met when- e v e r M o d i visited. In January 2015, Jaishankar was days away from his retirement when he was dramatically made foreign secretary by Modi. As foreign secretary, Jaishankar worked the back channels to end the India-China standoff at Doklam. His tenure as FS was later extended by a year. Jaishankar joined the Tata group three months after his retirement and after the “cooling-off period’’ of a year for bureaucrats was waived off by the government in his case.An IFS officer from the 1977 batch, he served as India’s ambassador to the US, China Singapore and Czech Republic. He also led the negotiations for the India-US nuclear deal between 2004 and 2008.| 62: 1 Lok Sabha TermThe feisty leader recently cemented his electoral muscle in Nagpur, which is home to the RSS headquarters, with a second Lok Sabha win.Gadkari earned his spurs as PWD minister in Maharashtra by delivering the Mumbai-Pune expressway and 55 flyovers in Mumbai, earning him sobriquets like ‘bridge bhushan’ and ‘flyover man’.However, Gadkari’s straight-shooting often gives rise to controversies. Last year, he said the government would not give the Navy an inch of land for housing in South Mumbai. Or even more embarrassing, he said it was wrong to call fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya a thief after one loan default. In the last few months, he made several cryptic comments that were seen as barbs at the leadership.All that seems water under the bridge now, and the RSS favourite is once again in the driver’s seat. After all, not only does he have a strong record as union minister for road transport and shipping, he has also been BJP’s trouble shooter in Goa, sorting out the political chaos that ensued after the death of Manohar Parrikar. This wasn’t the first time Gadkari was asked to pitch in. In 2017, when BJP failed to get a majority in the Goa Assembly polls, Gadkari had flown to the state to help the party cobble up an alliance with smaller partners, after which a government was formed under Parrikar’s leadership.| 59: 2 Rajya Sabha TermsThe last five years have seen a meteoric rise of this former JNU student, who joined the BJP just over a decade ago. She was nominated as party spokesperson in 2010. Under the government led by AB Vajpayee, she served as a member of the NCW 2003 till 2005.The two time Rajya Sabha member started out in May 2014 as an unsure minister of state with independent charge of commerce and industry. In September 2017, she went on to become India’s first full-time woman defence minister and a member of the hallowed cabinet committee on security.As the ‘Raksha Mantri’, Sitharaman took some time to find her feet in the complex defence ministry, and the overwhelmingly male dominated environs of the armed forces, with all its national security challenges. It was, of course, not easy to follow heavy-weight predecessors like Pranab Mukherjee, A K Antony, Arun Jaitley and Manohar Parrikar.She was also confronted with the tough task of countering Congress’ charge of crony capitalism in the Rs 59,000-crore Rafale deal, inked during Parrikar’s tenure. She vigourously defended the government’s stand on the defence deal. There was persistent talk she was kept out of the loop on major decisions, like the pre-dawn air strikes on the JeM facility in Balakot. But the earnest minister, who rarely smiles, did not let go. She retains PM Modi’s trust.| 52: 2 Lok Sabha TermsThe Badal bahu, Harsimrat Kaur, has only seen highs in her first decade as a politician — she is a three-time MP from the Badal stronghold of Bathinda, was a minister with independent charge in PM Narendra Modi’s first government and now has made it to the Cabinet. She also made history for the Shiromani Akali Dal — she is the first MP in its 98-year history to be made a Union minister twice in consecutive terms.Her father Satyajit Singh Majithia and grandfather Surjit Singh Majithia were Congress politicians and it was her marriage to Sukhir, only son of SAD patriarch Parkash Singh Badal , in 1991 that shifted her family’s allegiance to the Akalis. Her younger brother Bikram Majithia is a SAD MLA and was a minister during Badal Senior’s tenure as chief minister.Harsimrat actively campaigned for her husband in 1996 when he contested his first Lok Sabha election from Faridkot. However, her entry into politics in 2009 created news — she defeated Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh’s son Raninder by over 1.2 lakh votes in Bathinda. She was reelected in 2014 by defeating her husband’s estranged cousin Manpreet Singh Badal, the current finance minister of Punjab. Her third straight election was not a cakewalk, especially with voter anger against SAD. However, she managed to defeat Congress MLA Amrinder Singh Raja Warring by 21,772 votes.| 43From Miss India contestant to soap opera star to giant slayer, Smriti Irani’s career has not had a dull moment. Irani captured India’s imagination as ‘Tulsi’ in one of the most successful running soaps of all time. In 2004, when most would have been thinking of graduating to a film career, Irani chose politics running an unsuccessful but feisty campaign against Kapil Sibal from Chandni Chowk. In a nod to her fighting spirit, Irani was made Rajya Sabha member in 2011, and held several positions in parliamentary committees till 2014 when she challenged Congress president Rahul Gandhi in Amethi. She lost the poll battle but won a cabinet position in the Modi government.Controversies though were not far behind (least of which were her “fake”educational qualification), and soon she was divested of the ‘sensitive’ HRD portfolio to I&B ministry. There, too, a controversial proposal to reign in ‘fake news’ placed the government in crisis that could only be defused after the notification was withdrawn. She appeared to have lost favour and moved to textiles but her dogged campaign against the ‘lapata saansad’ (read Rahul Gandhi) which led to a shock victory in the Gandhi pocket borough of Amethi has cemented her political career.| 61: 2 Lok Sabha TermsSeen as the tallest BJP leader in Madhya Pradesh after former CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Was minister of panchayat and rural development and mines in the outgoing Modi Cabinet . After taking oath, he immediately chalked out a 100-day road map to execute the development agenda of the Modi government, and promoted skill development. During the 2019 Lok Sabha election, when sitting MPs were being ruthlessly weeded out if there was even a hint of anti-incumbency, Tomar was the only one allowed to change his seat from Gwalior to Morena. This is an indication of his clout in the party. Beyond politics, Tomar’s interests lie in sports and poetry, and he is known for organizing poetry symposiums.| 64Fondly known as ‘doctor saab’ in Delhi circles, Harsh Vardhan is among BJP’s old world politicians. The good doctor, who has held ministerial portfolios in the Centre and the state, nurtured the same assembly constituency —Krishna Nagar in east Delhi — since 1992 till he shifted to Chandni Chowk for the 2014 Lok Sabha election. As health minister in Delhi, he earned recognition for the universal coverage of the polio campaign.As Union environment minister, he is credited with motivating the country’s scientists to come up with new technologies, processes and products that can provide innovative solutions to people’s problems. But in recent years, he has been known more for his controversial remarks than significant work. In 2014, as union health minister he advocated fidelity rather than use of condoms to tackle AIDS. Then in 2018 as science and technology minister he announced that cosmologist Stephen Hawking had declared the Vedas were superior to Einstein’s theory of relativity. It later turned out that he had fallen for a fake Facebook page. As environment minister, he rubbished claims that bad air was killing people.| 49: 1 Lok Sabha TermThough the Naveen Patnaik era continues in Odisha, Pradhan’s efforts as leader of BJP’s campaign in the state did result in big gains in the Lok Sabha election. In the state too, BJP has replaced Congress as the number two party and seems well established to be the main challenger to Biju Janata Dal.As the Union minister of petroleum and natural gas, Pradhan led the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, a key initiative of the Narendra Modi government. This saw a sharp rise in LPG households from 20 lakh in 2014 to almost 78 lakh in February 2019. This, along with the #GiveUp scheme where middle-class households were urged by the government to give up LPG subsidy so that the social benefit could go to those who needed it, has been widely accepted as a pro-poor reform that helped BJP make inroads in the electorate.| 72Paswan is known as the ‘mausam vaigyanik’ (weather vane) for his ability to read political currents correctly. This time, too, his prediction that BJP under Modi was headed back to office was proved right. However, LJP chief did have a disagreement with the NDA over division of seats, but managed to drive a hard bargain, wrangling six seats. And despite the Modi wave in much of India, LJP won all six. His portfolio — Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution — may not have been the weightiest, but Paswan’s inputs on political issues did prove useful. He was the one who insisted that the income support under the PM-Kisan Yojna should be direct transfers. There was talk that his son Chirag would get the berth this time but junior was more interested in leading LJP in the Bihar polls.| 54: 2 Rajya Sabha TermsThe chartered accountant was seen as a performer in the Modi government after he successfully oversaw auctions of coal blocks that were cancelled by the Supreme Court.His next challenge was to improve power supply and he did that by seeking to make utilities more efficient, while helping many of them avoid bankruptcy. Between all this, he successfully managed to push LED bulbs and renewable energy and ensured that nearly every household had an electricity connection.A trusted aide of Modi, Goyal was the man the PM could count on to handle varied portfolios. Besides his own MoS for coal, power and renewable energy, Goyal also filled in for Arun Jaitley in the finance ministry when he was unwell. The low-profile Goyal comes from political legacy. His father Ved Prakash Goyal was minister for transport in the Atal Behari Vajpayee government while his mother Chandrakanta was a three-term MLA from Matunga in Mumbai. A chartered accountant and investment banker, Goyal was on the board of directors of Bank of Baroda and State Bank of India.Goyal has been associated with BJP since 1984. He was a member of the national executive and national campaign in-charge for the Lok Sabha elections for a prolonged period. He is serving his second term in the Rajya Sabha. Known to work with a team of around 20 trusted advisors, mostly graduates of top business schools, Goyal has facts, figures, spreadsheets on the activities of his ministry at his disposal at all times.| 68: 3 Rajya Sabha TermsA successful minister and astute political manager, Javadekar helmed three different ministries in the first Modi government. He was minister of state (independent charge) for environment, forests and climate change, a tenure he used to reduce red tape around clearances and to enforce pollution norms for industry in sensitive zones like along the Ganga.He was also the minister of state for information and broadcasting and for parliamentary affairs, before being elevated to cabinet rank for the HRD portfolia, in which post he notably avoided the controversies his predecessor had got enmeshed in.Javadekar began working fulltime for BJP after resigning his job with Bank of Maharashtra in 1981.In a 35-year-long association with the party, the 68-year-old Brahmin has held various organisational posts at the state and national levels, including general se cretary of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha.His importance to the saffron party is reflected in his being given charge of states like Rajasthan and Karnataka which required deft handling of senior party leaders and concluding alliances with influential individuals.| 64: 4 Rajya Sabha TermsHe is a familiar figure from television, a combative spokesperson for BJP. But the politician from Bihar also handled his other assignment, as Narendra Modi’s cabinet minister, first in the communications ministry and then in the law and justice ministry, with equanimity.After four terms as Rajya Sabha member, this year he contested the Lok Sabha polls against Shatrughan Sinha, who deserted BJP and was nominated by Congress from Patna Sahib. He scored a huge victory and earned another tenure as Modi’s minister. Beginning as an anti-Indira Gandhi student activist in the 1970s, he became associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh and ABVP during his youth.Since 1995, he has been an articulate member of the BJP national executive and won four times a seat in the Rajya Sabha, where he ably worked the aisles to ensure support for the government in a House where BJP lacked a majority.A senior advocate of the Supreme Court, the 64-year-old can be recalled as the main lawyer in the fodder case against RJD president Lalu Yadav.| 51: 1 Lok Sabha TermIn the past year, the tech-savvy and soft spoken Gajendra Singh Shekhawat has come to be considered the party high command’s chosen man in Rajasthan, someone who can be a replacement for former chief minister Vasundhara Raje.Ironically, it was Raje’s attempts to stymie his nomination as the Rajasthan BJP chief last year that conferred on him instant recognition and popularity across the desert state. In the Lok Sabha elections, he had a difficult fight on hand against Vaibhav Gehlot, son of chief minister Ashok Gehlot, from Jodhpur. But for someone fighting only his second election, Shekhawat recorded a comfortable win, helped in some measure by PM Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah campaigning for him. Now 51, Shekhawat, a Rajput, began his political career in 1992 as president of the student union at Jodhpur’s Kai Narain Vyas University. He entered electoral politics in 2014, but by then he was closely associated with the Sangh Parivar.| 66: 1 Lok Sabha TermOne of the most watched battles in the general elections was CPI’s Kanhaiya Kumar taking on the seasoned Giriraj Singh of BJP in Bihar’s Begusarai constituency. In the event, Singh was able to notch up a huge victory, helped to no small measure by his familiarity with voters. He has been a frequent newsmaker with his controversial remarks about the need for bigger Hindu families. A Bhumihar Brahmin from Lakhisarai district of Bihar, Singh was member of the state legislative council for 12 years from 2002, joining the state minister in 2005, first as co-operatives minister and then then as animal husbandry minister from 2010 to 2013. A staunch supporter of PM Narendra Modi, Singh rode the saffron wave in 2014 to win a Lok Sabha seat from Nawada. Among the BJP ministers in Bihar to have lost their posts after the BJP-JDU break-up in 2013, Singh found himself rewarded with a place in Modi’s 2014 ministry as minister of state for micro, small and medium enterprises. His re-election this year has won him an elevation as a cabinet minister.| 67: 1 Lok Sabha TermA hardcore Shiv Sainik who lives in a chawl in the Marathi heartland of Sewri, Arvind Sawant was among the Shiv Sena’s old guard. He has risen to become a two-term MP after defeating the Congress’s high-profile Milind Deora in Mumbai South, also becoming the national face of the party.Sawant’s core strength has been his record as a trade unionist and a guardian of the rights of the sons of the soil. He controls the union of telephone employees — the Mahanagar Telephone Kamgar Sena. Aggressive and articulate, Sawant began his political innings in 1968 as a group leader in the party. His managerial skills and ability to get along with people soon pushed him ahead of others to become the deputy leader of the party. He has also served as an MLC.| 56: 3 Lok Sabha TermsElected for the fourth time with a win margin of over 2 lakh votes from BJP-RSS stronghold of Dharwad, the longstanding RSS functionary’s political career took off back in 1992 when he participated, along with Uma Bharati in the Hubballi Idgah Maidan conflict in 1992, which led to a communal flare-up. He was state BJP president from 2012 to 2016 when the party’s five-year government ended amid serious allegations of graft, and scandals. He is believed to be best placed to replace the late H N Ananth Kumar as a bridge between the Centre and Karnataka, as he was the former’s understudy. Ananth Kumar’s brother Nand and Joshi’s brother Gopal are business partners and both families are very close.| 61: 1 LS Term, 3 RS TermsOne of the most prominent Muslim faces of BJP, he made his electoral debut in 1980 when he won from Allahabad West assembly seat. He later joined BJP and is one of the few ministers in the newly inducted cabinet who has also served in Vajpayee’s government, including Rajnath Singh and Santosh Gangwar.He was elected to Lok Sabha from Rampur in 1998, and was subsequently given the post of MoS for information and broadcasting in the Vajpayee government. He became MoS for minority affairs and parliamentary affairs in 2014. He got independent charge of the ministry. He has now been elevated to cabinet position.| 61: 1 Lok Sabha TermUttar Pradesh BJP chief and Chandauli MP Mahendra Nath Pandey has been rewarded after the party’s impressive performance in the Lok Sabha polls in the state. A Brahmin from eastern UP, Pandey’s constituency is adjacent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Varanasi seat. He was MoS for human resource development in 2016-17 before being sent to UP to head the party’s state unit. Pandey is credited with leading the party against a formidable SP-BSP alliance and notching up a good tally and seamlessly running the party machinery in sync with chief minister Yogi Adityanath.| 59Before starting his political journey, Nishank, 59, worked as a teacher in Shishu Mandir, a school under RSS’s Vidya Bharti, in Dehradun. His RSS background came handy when this gardener’s son joined the BJP. In 1991, he was first elected from Karnaprayag assembly seat to the UP assembly for the first time.He went on to win the seat again in 1993 and 1996. He was a minister in the UP cabinet and then in 2000, after Uttarakhand was formed, Nishank bagged high-profile portfolios. From 2009 to 2011, he was the Uttarakhand chief minister.| 66Gowda, popularly called DVS in his home state of Karnataka, belongs to the Vokkaliga community and, after the death of H N Ananth Kumar, is among the most important BJP leaders from that state. He had a short tenure as chief minister of Karnataka a year between 2011 and 2012).After his election to the Lok Sabha from Bangalore North, he was inducted in the Union ministry, where he variously held the charges of railways, law and statistics & programme implementation ministries.| 71: 4 Lok Sabha TermsAn easily recognised schedule caste face in BJP, Gehlot played a crucial role in containing discontentment in the SC community over the amendment of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. He was minister for social justice and empowerment then and has been rewarded with a continued run as cabinet minister. The 71-year-old Rajya Sabha member from Madhya Pradesh joined the Bharatiya Jan Sangh in 1962. He spent 10 months in jail for participating in the 1968-71 workers’ agitation and was also detained during the Emergency.| 51: 1 Lok Sabha TermThe former CM is the lone member in the Cabinet from Jharkhand. The three-term CM, who has the distinction of holding the post for the longest period in the politically tumultuous state, won the reserved tribal seat of Khunti by a slim margin despite it being considered as a lost cause by BJP. Known as a crisis manager, he was just 35 when he was first chosen to lead the state in 2002 after NDA alliance partners sought the ouster of then CM Babulal Marandi. Munda went on to helm the state for two more terms.|70: 7 Lok Sabha TermsIn his eighth win from Bareilly, the seasoned politician retained his place in the cabinet, where he served as MoS labour and employment in Modi’s first ministry. Gangwar has been an LS MP for six consecutive terms since 1989 and was defeated in the 2009 election, only to make a comeback in 2014.|69: 4 Lok Sabha TermsThe Gurgaon MP comes from a political lineage and won with a large margin. He has held a relatively light portfolio given his seniority, partly because of his outspoken comments and his penchant of tangling with state BJP leaders.|66: 4 Lok Sabha TermsA founder member of BJP in Goa, Naik has won the North Goa seat for the fifth consecutive time. He held independent charge of the Ayush ministry in Modi’s first Cabinet. Naik was also minister in the Vajpayee government.|62: 1 Lok Sabha TermElected for the second time from J&K’s Udhampur, Singh held portfolios such as that of the PMO, DoPT and atomic energy. Soon after he took charge in 2014, he courted controversy by demanding the repeal of Article 370.|47: 2 Lok Sabha TermsThe MoS for home in the last government, he was seen to have handled his ministerial assignment well, with a flair for interacting with para military and police personnel. This was Rijiju’s third Lok Sabha poll victory.|58: 4 Lok Sabha TermsOnce junior coal mantri in AB Vajpayee’s government, the OBC neta is a five-time parliamentarian and was a front-runner for Modi’s second Cabinet. Patel was first elected to 9th Lok Sabha in 1989 and won in 1996, 1999 and 2014.|66: 1 Lok Sabha TermA former Union home secretary, Raj Kumar Singh finds place in Team NaMo once again. In the first Modi government, he was minister of state for new and renewable energy (independent charge).|67: 1 Rajya Sabha TermThe outgoing Union minister lost the 2019 election from Amritsar to sitting Congress MP Gurjeet Singh Aujla but stays on in Modi’s Cabinet. The former IFS officer was inducted into the cabinet in September 2017.|47: 2 Rajya Sabha TermsThe MP cycling to Parliament has been a familiar sight in the last five years. Mandaviya was junior minister for road transport& highways, shipping, chemicals & fertilisers in Modi’s first Cabinet.Here is a list of ministers of state.