The government on Tuesday morning released a list of new faces to be inducted into the Union Cabinet, which will be reshuffled later this evening.
TMC’s Dinesh Trivedi will be the new Railways Minister, while Jairam Ramesh will be the new Rural Development Minister. Jayanthi Natarajan will replace Ramesh at the Ministry of Environment and Forest.
As reported earlier, the DMK will not have any replacements for A Raja and Dayanidhi Maran in the Cabinet.
The changes in the Cabinet are as follows:
Cabinet ministers
Veerappa Moily – From Law to Corporate Affairs
Salman Khurshid – Law and additional charge of Minority Affairs
Jairam Ramesh – From Environment to Rural Development
Beni Prasad Verma – Steel
Dinesh Trivedi – Railways
Vilasrao Deshmukh – From Rural Development to Science and Technology
Kishore Chandra Deo – Tribal Affairs and Panchayati Raj
Commerce minister Anand Sharma gets additional charge of Textiles
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal gets additional charge of Water Resources
Kapil Sibal retains HRD and Telecom
Minister of State (Independent charge)
Jayanthi Natarajan – Environment and Forests
Gurudas Kamat – Sanitation and Drinking Water
Paban Gatowar – North East Affairs
Srikant Jena (Statistics and Programme Implementation)
Ministers of State
Rajiv Shukla – Parliamentary Affairs
Jitendra Singh –Home Affairs
Mukul Roy from Railways to Shipping
Sudip Bandhopadhyay – Health and family welfare
Milind Deora – Communication and Information Technology
Charan Das Mahant – Agriculture and Food Processing
Those dropped
Murli Deora
MS Gill
BK Handique
Kantilalal Bhuria
Sai Prathap
Arun Yadav
The reshuffle is likely to take place at 5 pm. The Prime Minister’s Office has already told the President’s Office to make necessary preparations.
As reported, the ‘Big Four’ ministers – Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Defence Minister AK Antony, Home Minister P Chidambaram and External Affairs Minister SM Krishna – will continue in their current positions.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met Monday to give final touches to the new list. This was their fourth meeting in three weeks.
The reshuffle comes in the wake of a series of corruption scams, which forced two DMK ministers – A Raja and Dayanidhi Maran – to quit office and tarnished the image of the UPA-II government.
