Bhubaneswar/New Delhi: Two members of parliament from Odisha have found place in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Cabinet which took oath of office and secrecy at Rashtrapati Bhawan in New Delhi this evening.
Rajya Sabha MP Dharmendra Pradhan and newly-elected Balasore MP Pratap Sarangi have been picked by Modi.
Modi was sworn-in for the second consecutive term as Prime Minister.
Like in Prime Minister’s first inning, only two MPs have found place in the Union government. In 2014, Dharmendra Pradhan and Jual Oram were made ministers with only the latter winning from Sundargarh and the former nominated to Rajya Sabha from Bihar then. However, this time also two MPs have got berths – Pradhan and Sarangi.
Former Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram hasn’t found place in ministry this time.
The number of MPs from Odisha hasn’t remained unchanged despite the number increasing from one to eight.
Several foreign dignitaries including opposition and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders were in attendance at the swearing-in ceremony. Bollywood celebrities -- Asha Bhosle, Rajinikanth, Karan Johar, Anupam Kher, Kangana Ranaut, Anil Kapoor, Shahid Kapoor, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, Jitendra -- also took part in the event.
Industrialist Mukesh Ambani, his wife Neeta, spiritual guru Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev and Nobel Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi were also invited to the ceremony.
The swearing-in ceremony began at 7 pm and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the first to be sworn-in by President Ramnath Kovind.
The others who took oath are (In chronological order):
Rajnath Singh
Amit Shah
Nitish Gadkari
D Sadananda Gowda
Nirmala Sitharaman
Ram Vilas Paswan
Narendra Singh Tomar
Ravi Shankar Prasad
Harsimrat Kaur Badal
Thawar Chand Gehlot
Subrahmanyam Jaishankar
Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank
Arjun Munda
Smriti Zubin Irani
Dr Harshvardhan
Prakash Keshav Javadekar
Piyush Vedprakash Goyal
Dharmendra Pradhan
Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi
Prahlad Venkatesh Joshi
Dr Mahendra Nath Pandey
Arvind Ganpat Sawant
Giriraj Singh
Gajendra Singh Sekhawat
Santosh Kumar Gangwar
Rao Inderjit Singh
Sripad Naik
Dr Jitendra Singh
Kiren Rijiju
Prahalad Singh Patel
Raj Kumar Singh
Hardeep Singh Puri
Mansukh Laxmanbhai Mandaviya
Faggan Singh Kulaste
Aswini Kumar Choubey
Arjun Ram Meghwal
Gen (Retd) Vijay Kumar Singh
Krishan Pal Gurjar
Raosaheb Dadarao Danve Patil
Gangapuram Kishan Reddy
Parshottam Khodabhai Rupala
Ramdas Athawale
Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti
Babul Supriyo
Sanjeev Kumar Balyan
Sanjay Shamrao Dhotre
Anurag Singh Thakur
Suresh Angadi
Nityanand Rai
Rattan Lal Kataria
V Muraleedharan
Renuka Singh Saruta
Som Prakash
Rameswar Teli
Pratap Chandra Sarangi
Kailash Choudhary
Debasree Chaudhury
Worth mentioning, 58 leaders were inducted into the Modi ministry of which 25 Cabinet Ministers, nine minister of State (Independent charge) and 24 minister of state took oath.