NEW DELHI, June 9: Poor show of BJP and its allies in Northeast reflected in the 72-member Council of Ministers (Full List on P-4), with only Sarbananda Sonowal and Kiren Rijiju from the region retaining their cabinet berths.
However, Rajya Sabha MP from Assam, Pabitra Margherita, was inducted into the Modi govt 3.0 cabinet as a Minister of State.
The BJP retained its tally of nine in Assam with one each in two allies AGP United People’s Party. It also maintained its tally in Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura which have four seats each but lost to Congress in Manipur (2), Nagaland (1) and NPP (1).
Lone Lok Sabha seats, one in Sikkim and Mizoram each, have gone to SKM and JPM respectively. Hence there was no new face to be inducted into this year’s ministry as of now. In the last Council of Ministers, there were three MoS from Northeast — Rameshwar Teli (Assam), Dr Rajkumar Ranjan Singh (Manipur) and Pratima Bhowmick (Tripura) — but none of them were given tickets for 2024 polls.
It is expected that Tapir Gao, senior BJP leader of Arunachal Pradesh, Biplab Kumar Deb, former Chief Minister of Tripura and one from Assam might make it to the ministry at a later stage during a reshuffle or expansion.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi took oath on Sunday along with 72 ministers of the new coalition government. Thirty of them are Cabinet ministers, five independent charges, and 36 Ministers of State. The portfolios will be announced later.
The oath-taking ceremony was held at the lawns of the Rashtrapati Bhavan. President Droupadi Murmu administered the oath to the Prime Minister and other ministers. Sonowal was the first leader from the Northeast to take oath today followed by Kiren Rijiju.
