(Image source from: Twitter.com/BJP4India)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the third consecutive term sworn in as the prime minister of India on Sunday along with the 71 cabinet ministers.

Modi's cabinet:

Minister of Council: Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Rajnath Singh, JP Nadda, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Nirmala Sitharaman, S Jaishankar, Piyush Goyal, Jitan Ram Manjhi, Ranjan Singh, Dr Virendra Kumar among others took oath.

Five allies of the BJP got one cabinet berth each in Modi’s 3.0 crew.

Members from allies sworn in: HD Kumaraswamy (JDS), HAM Chief Jitan Ram Manjhi, Rajiv Ranjan Singh ‘Lalan’ (JDU), K Ram Mohan Naidu (TDP), Pemmasani Chandrasekhar (TDP) (MOS) and LJP RV leader Chirag Paswan also took oath as cabinet ministers.

Narendra Modi has retained power for the third consecutive term and retained the same portfolios for four of his ministers, Rajnath Singh retains defence, Amit Shah gets Home minister, Nirmala Sitaraman in finance and S Jaishankar continues as external affairs minister.

Besides this, surprisingly more than 30 ministers from his old cabinet were dropped from Modi 3.0 cabinet including Smriti Irani, who lost in Amethi against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi with a margin of more than one lakh votes. Here are a few top leaders of the BJP who missed their berths in 2024 cabinet:

1) Anurag Thakur:

Anurag Thakur has won for the fifth time from Himachal Pradesh, Hamirpur and missed a berth from the Modi cabinet. In the last cabinet, he served as the Information and Broadcast minister. Earlier in 2019 Anurag Thakur was sworn in as minister of state, later in 2021 he was promoted into cabinet rank by getting I&B ministry. However he was dropped from Narendra Modi 3.0 team. Sources claim that JP Nadda was brought back into the cabinet in his place. As the BJP wanted to have only one minister from Himachal Pradesh, they dropped Anurag from the cabinet. But Nadda won this time from Gujarat and would technically be a Member of Lok Sabha from Gujarat not from Himachal.

2) Narayan Rane:

Narayan Rane was the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) minister in the second term of Narendra Modi’s government. Rane was a former leader of Shiv Sena and Congress. He joined BJP in 2019. He won from the constituency Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg from Maharashtra. Somehow he failed to impress Modi and was dropped from his new cabinet.

3) Parshottam Rupala:

A veteran BJP leader and has served Modi’s cabinet for the last two terms. He missed his berth in the third term despite winning a massive victory from Rajkot, Gujarat with a margin of 8,57,984 votes. Rupala served as Minister of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying in the 2019 government. But during the 2024 election campaigns, he landed in trouble with his remarks on Rajasthan kshetriya by saying that, maharajas' broke bread with Britishers and married off their daughters to them. For his comments, there was a situation where Narendra Modi had to cancel his scheduled rally in Rajkot. This controversy made Rupala step out of the cabinet.

4) Faggan Singh Kulaste:

Faggan was the other minister who was dropped from the cabinet despite winning the election with a good margin from Mandia, Madhya Pradesh. Sources say that he was dropped from the cabinet because of his poor performance and wrongdoings.

Ajay Bhatt was also one more minister who was dropped from the cabinet to get a Dalit face in the cabinet from Uttarakhand.