New Delhi:
A cabinet reshuffle is set to take place on Sunday morning at 10:30 AM as Prime Minister Narendra Modi will induct nine new ministers into the Union Council of Ministers.
As part of the restructuring, six incumbent ministers have resigned to take on other responsibilities.
The new faces include Shiv Pratap Shukla, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, Virendra Kumar, Anantkumar Hegde, Raj Kumar Singh, HardeepSingh Puri, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Satya Pal Singh, and Alphons Kannanthanam.
All of the new ministers are from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Let’s have a look at new faces of team Modi:
# Shiv Pratap Shukla: He is a Rajya Sabha MP from Uttar Pradesh and a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Rural Development. A Law Graduate with an LLB from Gorakhpur University, he entered politics as a student leader in the 1970s.
# Ashwini Kumar Choubey: He is a Lok Sabha MP from Buxar, Bihar. Further, he is a member of the Parliamentary Committee on Estimates and Standing Committee on Energy apart from being a Member of Central Silk Board.
# Virendra Kumar: Virendra Kumar is a Lok Sabha MP from Tikamgah, Madhya Pradesh. He has had a distinguished career in Public Service as a 6 term Lok Sabha MP. Moreover, he also has an MA in Economics and a PhD in Child Labour.
# Anant Kumar Hegde: He is a Lok Sabha MP from Uttara Kannada, Karnataka. Further, he also fulfils the role of a Member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs and Human Resource Development. Moreover, he is also the Founder President of Kadamba, an NGO working in the field of rural development.
# Raj Kumar Singh: Raj Kumar Singh is a Lok Sabha MP from Arrah, Bihar and a Member of the Parliamentary Standing Committees on Health and Family Welfare, Personnel, Pensions and Public Grievances and Law & Justice. Further, he is also a former IAS officer who rose up ranks to become the Home Secretary of India.
# Hardeep Puri: Hardeep Puri is a former IFS officer of the 1974 batch and the President and Chairman of Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS) think tank. Further, he has also fulfilled the role of the Vice President of International Peace Institute, New York. Moreover, as Head of the Indian Delegation to the UN Security Council, he had served as Chairman of the Counter-Terrorism Committee of the UN and as President of the United Nations Security Council.
# Gajendra Singh Shekhawat: He is a Lok Sabha MP from Jodhpur, Rajasthan and a Member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance and Chairperson of the Fellowship Committee. He is armed with a MPhil & MA in Philosophy from Jodhpur’s Jai Narayan Vyas University.
# Satya Pal Singh: Satya Pal Singh is a Lok Sabha MP from Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh. He is a Member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs and Chairperson of the Joint Committee on Offices of Profit. He is a distinguished former IPS officer of the 1980 batch, Maharashtra cadre, and has been recognized with medals like the Antrik Suraksha Sewa Padak by Government of India in 2008 and a Special Service Medal for extraordinary work in the Naxalite areas of Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh in 1990.
Moreover, has also been the Commissioner of Police of Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur – and is credited for breaking the backbone of organised crime syndicates in Mumbai in the 1990s.
# Alphons Kannanthanam: He is a distinguished former IAS officer of the 1979 batch, Kerala cadre. He is also a practicing advocate. He became famous as Delhi's Demolition Man when he was Commissioner of the Delhi Development Authority, having cleared DDA areas of encroachment removing around 15,000 illegal buildings.
This got him listed in Time Magazine's list of 100 Young Global Leaders in 1994.He pioneered the literacy movement in India as District Collector of Kottayam by making it the first 100% literate town in India in 1989.
Further, he set up Janshakti, an NGO in 1994, to get citizens to believe in their ability to make government accountable to people. Alphons Kannanthanam retired from the IAS, to get elected as an Independent Member of Legislative Assembly for Kanjirappally in Kerala from 2006 to 2011. He is a Member of the Committee to prepare the final draft of the National Education Policy 2017.
