The Prime Minister inducted 19 new ministers on Tuesday morning expanding his cabinet strength to 78. But later on Tuesday night the government reportedly made a major reshuffle in which the most noticeable was the change in the Human Resources Development Ministry. 

So what were the big changes?

Smriti Irani, who has courted controversy on many occasions during her tenure since May 2014, was removed as HRD minister and has been replaced by Prakash Javadekar, who was elevated to cabinet rank on Tuesday morning. Javadekar was earlier the Environment minister. Irani has been moved to the relatively unimportant and uncontroversial textiles ministry.

Venkiah Naidu is no longer Parliament Affairs Minister. However, he remains Urban Development Minister and is now also the minister for Information and Broadcasting. The Information and Broadcasting Ministry was with Arun Jaitley earlier. Ananth Kumar takes charge as the Parliamentary Affairs Minister. 

b’Gowda had an uneventful tenure as law minister | Source: PIB’

D. V. Sadananda Gowda is no longer the Law Minister and is now the minister in charge of Statistics & Programme Implementation. Ravi Shankar Prasad is the new Law & Justice Minister. Prasad incidentally, is also the Electronics & Information Technology minister. 

Vijay Goel who was elevated as a minister on Tuesday has been made the minister in charge of Youth Affairs and Sports. The post had been lying vacant after the last Sports Minister Sarbananda Sonowal became the Chief Minister of Assam. 

Santosh Gangwar was the earlier Textiles Minister and has had to make way for Irani. However, he is now the Minister Of State in charge of the Finance Ministry

b’Sinha (2nd from left) is the new aviation minister | Source: PTI’

Jayant Sinha is no longer the Minister of State for Finance and instead is now the Minister of State for Aviation. Earlier, Mahesh Sharma was the minister of state for aviation and remains the Tourism and Culture Minister.

MJ Akbar is now the Minister of State for External Affairs