Modi 3.0: Smriti Irani, Anurag Thakur, Rajiv Chandrasekhar Among Former Ministers Dropped
Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the oath of office for a third consecutive term on May 30, 2024, at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Several former ministers from his previous government were not included in the new cabinet, including Smriti Irani, Anurag Thakur, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, RK Singh, Narayan Rane, VK Singh, Kapil Patil, Raosaheb Danve, and Bharti Pawar.
Smriti Irani, the former Union Minister for Women and Child Development, lost her Lok Sabha seat in Amethi to a close aide of the Gandhi family. Anurag Thakur, who served as the information and broadcasting minister in Modi’s second term, was also among the surprising omissions from the list of ministers. He retained his seat in Himachal Pradesh’s Hamirpur constituency but was not included in the cabinet.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who lost to Shashi Tharoor in a close contest by just 16,000 votes, is also among those missing from the new government. Chandrasekhar was the Minister of State for the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in the previous government.
RK Singh, who held the Ministry of Power and New and Renewable Energy, is another ex-minister who has been dropped. He lost the Lok Sabha election to the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (Liberation)’s Sudama Prasad, by over 59,000 votes.
Narayan Rane, who held the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises Ministry in the previous term of Modi’s government, is not in the new cabinet of Modi. He defeated Shiv Sena (UBT) candidate Vinayak Raut from Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg constituency by 47,000 votes.
General (retd) VK Singh served as Minister of State (RT&H and Civil Aviation) in the previous Modi government. However, in 2024 elections, Singh, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader who has been two-time MP from Ghaziabad, was not given a ticket.
Kapil Patil, who served as MoS Panchayati Raj during the second term of Modi government, is also among those dropped from the cabinet this time. Patil who contested from Bhiwandi Lok Sabha seat, lost to NCP (Sharad Pawar) candidate Suresh Gopinath Mhatre by over 6,000 votes.
Raosaheb Danve who held the portfolio as MoS Railways is also not in the new government. He lost to Congress’ Kalyan Vaijnath Rao Kale from Jalna constituency by over 1 lakh votes.
Bharti Pawar who served as Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare is another former minister who is not part of Modi government. She suffered a defeat at the hand of NCP (SP) candidate Bhaskar Bhagre from Dindori seat by over 1 lakh votes.
