BJP chief JP Nadda returns to Modi Cabinet, Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh among retained ministers

While Bharatiya Janata Party chief JP Nadda returned to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Union Council of Ministers on Sunday, Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari and Piyush Goyal were among the senior party leaders to be retained as ministers.

Although Nirmala Sitharaman, S Jaishankar and Ashwini Vaishnaw did not contest the Lok Sabha elections, they were also sworn in.

Modi took oath as the prime minister for the third consecutive term at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi.

The ministerial portfolios were not announced immediately.

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 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...

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