Shivraj Singh Chouhan to Suresh Gopi: Meet the ministers in Modi govt 3.0

C S Pemmasani, TDP

2024 richest candidate now a minister
 

Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani hit the headlines soon after the Telugu Desam Party fielded him from Guntur after Jayadev Galla, the two-term MP from the seat from 2014 onwards announced he was withdrawing from active politics. Pemmasani, a medical doctor, was again in the news when he filed his nomination. In his affidavit, he declared his income to be ~5,785 crore, making him the wealthiest candidate in the Lok Sabha polls fray. After graduating in medicine from Osmania Medical College, Pemmasani studied in the United State and served as an attending physician at Johns Hopkins University and Sinai Hospital. He is the founder and CEO of UWorld, a test preparation company. He defeated Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party’s Kilari Venkata Rosaiah by 344,695 votes from Guntur

 

Ravneet S Bittu, BJP
 

NDA’s Punjab bet discovers victory in loss
 

Ravneet Singh Bittu, a two-term Congress Lok Sabha MP from Ludhiana, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the run-up to the 2024 elections. When Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury was busy with the Bengal Assembly polls in 2021, Bittu briefly led the Congress party in the Lok Sabha. Grandson of former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh, Bittu is a rare ministerial council member who has been inducted despite his loss in the LS polls. He has to be elected to the Rajya Sabha within six months. At least five of the BJP’s Rajya Sabha MPs were elected to the Lok Sabha This would open up a vacancy for Bittu. Even though BJP lost in all 13 constituencies, the party increased its vote share to 18.56 per cent in Punjab. In several places, BJP candidates faced protests by farmers. 
 

Bittu’s loss to Congress’ Amrinder Singh Raja Warring was by a thin margin of 20,942. His induction into the Union Council of Ministers suggests the BJP’s long-term interest in expanding its electoral footprint in Punjab.

Suresh Gopi, BJP
 

Modi’s Kerala trump card scores big
 

Suresh Gopi, a popular actor-cum-politician, achieved a historic win for the BJP in Kerala by winning the Thrissur Lok Sabha seat, a first for the party. Gopi defeated Communist Party of India leader V S Sunilkumar in a three-cornered fight by 74,686 votes with Congress’ senior leader K Muraleedharan coming in third. Earlier this year in January, Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed in Guruvayur’s Sreekrishna Temple in Thrissur draped in a white mundu and veshti to attend the wedding of Gopi’s daughter Bhagya. Modi took part in her ‘Kanyadaanam’ ritual. At the peak of his cinematic career, Gopi matched Mammooty and Mohanlal in terms of box-office numbers. In 2019, Gopi had finished number three but secured a respectable 28.2 per cent vote share. He was also nominated to the Rajya Sabha and his term ended in 2022.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan, BJP
 

Four-time CM readies for new role    
 

The longest serving chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, Shivraj Singh Chouhan had led the BJP to a famous win in the December 2023 Assembly polls on the back of his government’s welfare schemes, especially the ‘Laadli Bahna’. It had surprised many that the BJP replaced Chouhan with Mohan Yadav as the MP CM. Chouhan won from Vidisha by a 

massive margin of 821,408 votes. The BJP swept all 29 seats in MP. On Sunday, Chouhan became the Union cabinet minister for the first time in his more than three-decade-long political career. His induction into the Union Cabinet was amply clear after Prime Minister Narendra Modi lauded him at a rally in Madhya Pradesh before the Lok Sabha polls.

 

Jitan Ram ManjhI, HAM (Secular) 
 

Long-time Nitish ally makes the cut

At 79, Jitan Ram Manjhi, a former Bihar chief minister, is likely to be the oldest member of the Union council of ministers. A member of the Mahadalit community of Bihar, Manjhi has been a loyalist of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, falling out with him briefly in the run up to the Bihar Assembly polls in 2015. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Manjhi’s party had an alliance with the BJP-led NDA. He won the Gaya seat by 101,812 against the Rashtriya Janata Dal. Manjhi's political journey took a dramatic turn when, in 2014, he was unexpectedly anointed Chief Minister by Nitish Kumar, who had resigned after a disastrous Lok Sabha election. Kumar saw Manjhi as a caretaker. But the unassuming Manjhi quickly shattered those expectations.

Jitan Ram ManjhI, HAM (Secular)

 Cabinet Ministers

1. Narendra Modi

2. Rajnath Singh

3. Amit Shah

4. Nitin Gadkari

5. JP Nadda

6. Shivraj Singh Chouhan

7. Nirmala Sitharaman

8. S Jaishankar

9. Manohar Lal Khattar

10. HD Kumaraswamy

11. Piyush Goyal

12. Dharmendra Pradhan

13. Jitan Ram Manjhi

14. Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh

15. Sarbananda Sonowal

16. Dr Virendra Kumar

17. Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu

18. Pralhad Joshi

19. Jual Oram

20. Giriraj Singh

21. Ashwini Vaishnaw

22. Jyotiraditya Scindia

23. Bhupender Yadav

24. Gajendra Singh Shekhawat

25. Annapurna Devi

26. Kiren Rijiju

27. Hardeep Singh Puri

28. Mansukh Mandaviya

29. G Kishan Reddy

30. Chirag Paswan

31. CR Patil


Ministers of State with independent charge

1. Rao Inderjit Singh

2. Jitendra Singh

3. Arjun Ram Meghwal

4. Prataprao Ganpatrao Jadhav

5. Jayant Chaudhary

Ministers of State

1. Jitin Prasada

2. Shripad Naik

3. Pankaj Chaudhary

4. Krishan Pal Gurjar

5. Ramdas Athawale

6. Ram Nath Thakur

7. Nityanand Rai

8. Anupriya Patel

9. V Somanna

10. Dr Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani

11. SP Singh Baghel

12. Shobha Karandlaje

13. Kirti Vardhan Singh

14. BL Verma

15. Shantanu Thakur

16. Suresh Gopi

17. L Murugan

18. Ajay Tamta

19. Bandi Sanjay Kumar

20. Kamlesh Paswan

21. Bhagirath Chaudhary

22. Satish Chandra Dubey

23. Sanjay Seth

24. Ravneet Singh Bittu

25. Durga Das Uikey

26. Raksha Khadse

27. Sukanta Majumdar

28. Savitri Thakur

29. Tokhan Sahu

30. Rajbhushan Chaudhary

31. Bhupathiraju Srinivasa Varma

32. Harsh Malhotra

33. Nimuben Jayantibhai Bambhaniya

34. Murlidhar Mohol

35. George Kurian

36. Pabitra Margherita