New Delhi: BJP leaders Maneka Gandhi, Suresh Prabhu, JP Nadda, Radha Mohan Singh — Cabinet ministers in the first Modi government — have been dropped in the new government that assumed office on Thursday.
Besides the Cabinet ministers, those of minister of state rank — Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Mahesh Sharma, Jayant Sinha, SS Ahluwalia, Vijay Goel, K Alphons, Ramesh Jigajinagi, Ram Kripal Yadav, Anant Kumar Hegde, Anupriya Patel, Satya Pal Singh — have also not been included in the Council of Ministers.
Of these ministers, K Alphons lost his election while others have been victorious.
Maneka Gandhi, one of the senior-most members, is tipped to become pro-tem speaker of Lok Sabha.
Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and Uma Bharti also did not figure in the Cabinet. While Jaitley opted out of the government on health reasons, Swaraj and Bharti did not contest the Lok Sabha polls.
[source_without_link]ANI[/source_without_link]