India’s Modi chooses old faces in new Cabinet

NEW DELHI – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new coalition government on June 10 appointed Ms Nirmala Sitharaman as finance minister for a second consecutive term, the government said in a statement.

Ministerial posts were allotted a day after Mr Modi was

sworn in for a rare third consecutive term on June 9,

and his Cabinet held its first meeting on the evening of June 10.

Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Interior Minister Amit Shah also retained their portfolios, the government said.

After Mr Modi was sworn in, he was followed by his council of ministers – a group that consists of 30 Cabinet ministers. Nineteen of them are from his previous Cabinet. 

Some of the new faces include Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president J. P. Nadda and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Five of the new appointees are from the BJP’s coalition partners, whom Mr Modi has been forced to share power with after his party lost its majority in the Parliament.

Here is a look at some of the key names in the Cabinet:

Amit Shah

Mr Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah, 59, is a former president of the BJP and a close aide of Mr Modi.

He has risen through the ranks in the party, from a lowly party worker who hung campaign posters to influential home minister in 2019. He has been one of the key architects of critical government decisions, including

revoking autonomy of the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir,

and amending the citizenship law to grant nationality to only non-Muslim migrants from neighbouring countries.

Mr Shah’s rise has been closely interlaced with Mr Modi’s own ascent to the top. The duo met in the 1980s in the western state of Gujarat, where they were members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent of the ruling party. The two men come from very different backgrounds.

Mr Shah is a former stockbroker from a wealthy family, while Mr Modi is the son of a tea stall owner – yet they both became close allies.

Known for his meticulous attention to detail, Mr Shah, along with Mr Modi, has been working on fulfilling the core agenda of the BJP. He was instrumental in the ruling party’s strong performance in the 2014 and 2019 general elections.

Earlier, federal investigators under a government run by the Indian National Congress party had charged Mr Shah with running an extortion racket and ordering three murders. Mr Shah denied wrongdoing and was later acquitted by a court, which called the charges “politically motivated”.

Nirmala Sitharaman

Ms Sitharaman, 64, has held a string of increasingly important roles inside the BJP and the government under Mr Modi, and is seen as a senior and trusted member of the party.

She has previously been the minister in charge of the trade, defence and finance portfolios.

During her tenure as finance minister, Ms Sitharaman boosted spending on infrastructure, in line with Mr Modi’s priorities, trimmed the fiscal deficit from more than 9 per cent of gross domestic product during the Covid-19 pandemic and pushed for transparency in the government’s accounts.

She has overseen economic growth of more than 8 per cent, making India one of the fastest-growing major economies. She also enjoys good ties with the central bank, which paid the government a record dividend of about US$25 billion (S$33.8 billion) in 2024.

Subrahmanyam Jaishankar

A career diplomat, Mr Jaishankar has served as the foreign minister for the past five years. He has helped navigate India through two ongoing global wars and rising tensions with China, while steering an independent path through a fraying US-led international order. 

As foreign minister, Mr Jaishankar has robustly defended the country’s relationship with Russia. India has continued to buy oil and weapons even as the West has imposed ever-stricter sanctions on Moscow.

Mr Jaishankar has defended India’s pursuit of its own interests as “hedging” while pursuing “apparently contradictory approaches and objectives”.

India has grown closer to the West as relations with Beijing soured after a border clash in 2020, and tried to use the favourable geopolitical climate to position itself as an alternative to companies trying to diversify supply chains away from China.

India’s relations with the West have been complicated in recent months by allegations that its officials were involved in murder-for-hire plots in Canada and the US, but the broad contours of those relations are unlikely to change.

Before becoming foreign minister, Mr Jaishankar served as India’s envoy to China and as foreign secretary.

Piyush Goyal

Mr Goyal, 59, was minister in charge of trade, textiles and consumer affairs in the previous Modi administration, and is well known to Indian market watchers. He has been heavily involved in several trade negotiations recently, including an ambitious free trade agreement with Britain. 

He has donned many hats in his 35-year political career, previously helming important ministries like coal and power. He was a former treasurer of the BJP.

This year, Mr Goyal contested his first-ever election for a seat in the Lower House of Parliament, known as the Lok Sabha. He had previously represented the western state of Maharashtra in the Upper House since 2010. 

Mr Goyal’s father was also a federal minister and a national treasurer of the BJP for more than two decades.

Nitin Gadkari

Mr Gadkari, 67, has deep roots in the BJP’s ideological wing, the RSS.

In the last two Modi governments, Mr Gadkari led the transport ministry and is widely credited with rapidly expanding India’s infrastructure, including building some 10,000km of roads each year since 2018, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy.

Mr Gadkari has been urging states to promote the use of ethanol as an alternative source of fuel and pushing India’s carmakers to adopt better safety norms.  

J. P. Nadda

The 63-year-old BJP chief has been inducted in a Modi-led Cabinet for the second time. He served as the country’s health minister in the first Modi government from 2014 to 2019.

Mr Nadda, who started his political career as an activist in an anti-corruption movement, joined the student wing of the BJP and later its ideological parent, the RSS, before becoming the party’s president in 2020.

Mr Nadda is a close associate of Mr Modi’s and a lawyer by training, and represented the northern state of Himachal Pradesh in the Upper House of Parliament. During his time as party president, the BJP swept three key state-level elections in late 2023. 

Rajnath Singh

Mr Singh, 72, has served as India’s defence minister since 2019. During his tenure, the government banned the import of several defence items, as the country embarks on an ambitious programme to indigenise the manufacture of various key weapons systems. Even as it pursues that, the country has also diversified its imports and bought a lot more military hardware from the US, as Washington and New Delhi draw closer amid ongoing tensions with China. 

Mr Singh has also taken key steps to boost the participation of women in India’s armed forces, increasing the tenure of women officers from 10 years to 14 years and improving their promotional prospects in the army. 

Mr Singh has served as the BJP’s national president in the past. During his tenure, he advocated a 33 per cent reservation for women in the party set-up. He also previously had a stint leading the populous northern state of Uttar Pradesh, and had held key roles in the Parliament and the state legislature.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan

Mr Chouhan, 65, has more than two decades of political experience, including as the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, a populous state in central India.

He was recently passed over by the BJP’s leadership for another stint at the top state job and won a seat in Parliament in the recently concluded elections.

Mr Chouhan, who has been an MP twice in the past, is seen as very popular among rank-and-file BJP workers and also belongs to a lower caste of Hindus, further raising his appeal among voters from that group. BLOOMBERG