Narendra Modi was sworn in as Prime Minister of India for a third consecutive term on June 9, marking a historic moment in Indian politics. The event is considered as an extraordinary one as Modi became the only leader after former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to take oath as prime minister of India after completing the full tenure of each previous term.
President Droupadi Murmu administered the oath of office in a grand ceremony in Rashtrapati Bhawan.
Apart from Modi, 71 other ministers also took oath. This includes 30 cabinet ministers, 5 Ministers of State-Independent Charge, and 36 Ministers of State. From Bihar 4 have got cabinet berths while 4 took oath as Minister of State.
Those who have got a place in Modi 3.0 cabinet from Bihar include JDU’s Lalan Singh and Ram Nath Thakur, LJP’s Chirag Paswan and HAM leader Jitan Ram Manjhi. BJP leaders Giriraj Singh and Nityanand Rai have again found a place in the Modi government. Raj Bhushan Nishad and Satish Chandra Dubey are two new faces from BJP who have found a place in the Modi cabinet.
Lalan Singh
Senior JD(U) leader Rajiv Ranjan popularly known as Lalan Singh, who was inducted as a minister in the Narendra Modi government, has been among Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s closest aides for many years. This Bhumihar leader has always been party supremo Kumar’s strength, as this caste in Bihar is known to have wide political influence despite its small size.
Lalan was instrumental in stitching the JD(U)-RJD alliance in 2022. According to political observers, though Yadavs and Muslims are the traditional support bases of the RJD in certain areas of Munger, Jamalpur and Lahkisarai, Bhumihars and other upper-caste groups have been supporting Singh for the last several years.
Claims and counter-claims over an alleged rift between Singh and Nitish Kumar made headlines a few months ago as the political equations changed in the following months.
Singh won from the Munger Lok Sabha seat for the third time. He had also represented the Begusarai constituency seat once, between 2004 and 2009.
His previous victories came in 2009, 2019 and 2024, but when he lost in 2014, Nitish Kumar nominated him as an MP in the Rajya Sabha, and later he was also appointed the party’s national president.
Prior to this, Singh was nominated to the Bihar Legislative Council under the Governor’s quota and made the Minister for Road Construction Department in the then Jitan Ram Manjhi cabinet in June 2014. His induction and elevation despite the electoral loss sparked a rebellion in the JD(U) led by Gyanendra Singh Gyanu who later defected to the BJP with a group of 12 MLAs.
Giriraj Singh
The three-time MP is an upper caste Bhumihar leader who served as a minister in the Nitish Kumar government from 2005 to 2013. Known to be an ardent Modi supporter, the 71-year-old rose in politics on a hardcore Hindutva line. Singh previously served as Union Rural Development and Panchayati Raj minister and this time edged out another Bhumihar leader — newly elected Nawada MP Vivek Thakur — for the ministerial berth.
In the recently concluded polls, Singh defeated CPI(M)’s Abdhesh Kumar Roy by more than 81,000 votes from Begusarai and was brought back to the Council of Ministers despite the BJP’s Bihar ally JD(U) nominating Rajiv Ranjan Singh, also a Bhumihar.
Nityanand Rai
Rai (58), now a third-time MP from Ujiarpur, also took oath on Sunday. He has previously served as the Minister of State for Home Affairs and is seen as close to Union Minister Amit Shah who had made it clear that Rai would be given a “bigger role”.
Rai’s chances were boosted after BJP’s Ram Kripal Yadav lost to RJD’s Misa Bharti and he won from Ujiyarpur, defeating his nearest rival Alok Kumar Mehta of the RJD by more than 60,000 votes.
Raj Bhushan Choudhary
Also known as Raj Bhushan Nishad, the 46-year-old Mallah leader’s inclusion into the Council of Ministers was no surprise. Nishad, who lost the 2019 polls from Muzaffarpur as a nominee of the Vikasheel Insaan Party (VIP), contested on a BJP ticket this time and defeated Congress candidate Ajay Nishad by more than 2.3 lakh votes.
The Muzaffarpur MP is a doctor by profession and first set up his medical practice in Rosera in Samastipur. He switched to the BJP after the 2019 polls and was appointed state BJP vice-president as the party eyed Mallah and other allied castes’ votes.
Satish Chandra Dubey
Dubey (49) is a Rajya Sabha MP and Brahmin leader from the Champaran region. He represented the Valmiki Nagar seat between 2014 and 2019. Dubey, who rose to prominence as a farm activist taking up the issues of sugarcane farmers, is seen to have pipped Darbhanga MP Gopalji Thakur, another Brahmin leader, to the ministerial post.
Full list of ministers who took oath on June 9
Cabinet Ministers
- Shri Raj Nath Singh
- Shri Amit Shah
- Shri Nitin Jairam Gadkari
- Shri Jagat Prakash Nadda
- Shri Shivraj Singh Chouhan
- Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman
- Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar
- Shri Manohar Lal
- Shri H. D. Kumaraswamy
- Shri Piyush Goyal
- Shri Dharmendra Pradhan
- Shri Jitan Ram Manjhi
- Shri Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh
- Shri Sarbananda Sonowal
- Dr. Virendra Kumar
- Shri Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu
- Shri Pralhad Joshi
- Shri Jual Oram
- Shri Giriraj Singh
- Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw
- Shri Jyotiraditya M. Scindia
- Shri Bhupender Yadav
- Shri Gajendra Singh Shekhawat
- Smt. Annpurna Devi
- Shri Kiren Rijiju
- Shri Hardeep Singh Puri
- Dr. Mansukh Mandaviya
- Shri G. Kishan Reddy
- Shri Chirag Paswan
- Shri C R Patil
Ministers of State (Independent Charge)
- Rao Inderjit Singh
- Dr. Jitendra Singh
- Shri Arjun Ram Meghwal
- Shri Jadhav Prataprao Ganpatrao
- Shri Jayant Chaudhary
Ministers of State
- Shri Jitin Prasada
- Shri Shripad Yesso Naik
- Shri Pankaj Chaudhary
- Shri Krishan Pal
- Shri Ramdas Athawale
- Shri Ram Nath Thakur
- Shri Nityanand Rai
- Smt. Anupriya Patel
- Shri V. Somanna
- Dr. Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani
- Prof. S. P. Singh Baghel
- Sushri Sobha Karandlaje
- Shri Kirtivardhan Singh
- Shri B. L. Verma
- Shri Shantanu Thakur
- Shri Suresh Gopi
- Dr. L. Murugan
- Shri Ajay Tamta
- Shri Bandi Sanjay Kumar
- Shri Kamlesh Paswan
- Shri Bhagirath Choudhary
- Shri Satish Chandra Dubey
- Shri Sanjay Seth
- Shri Ravneet Singh
- Shri Durgadas Uikey
- Smt. Raksha Nikhil Khadse
- Shri Sukanta Majumdar
- Smt. Savitri Thakur
- Shri Tokhan Sahu
- Shri Raj Bhushan Choudhary
- Shri Bhupathi Raju Srinivasa Varma
- Shri Harsh Malhotra
- Smt. Nimuben Jayantibhai Bambhaniya
- Shri Murlidhar Mohol
- Shri George Kurian
- Shri Pabitra Margherita
