It's a young Cabinet on the job

Narendra Modi's Cabinet is young compared to the previous UPA regime, and even the one led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

With Najma Heptulla (74) being the oldest and Smriti Irani (38) the youngest, the average age of the Council of Ministers under Modi is 55.41 years; Manmohan Singh Cabinet's had an average age of 67, and Vajpayee's NDA government had an average age of 61.

Veteran UP leader Kalraj Mishra, at 73, is the only other septuagenarian in the current Cabinet.

An analysis by PRS Legislative Research showed that the 16th Lok Sabha is a little older than the earlier one, with 253 of the total 543 MPs above the age of 55, as against 234 in the earlier House.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is aged 63, while his predecessor Singh was 71 in 2004, when he first assumed office. Besides Modi, the top guns — Rajnath Singh (62), Sushma Swaraj (62) and Arun Jaitley (61) — are all in their early 60s. Of the total 46 ministers, 19 are sexagenarians.

There are 17 ministers, including Nitin Gadkari, Uma Bharti, Maneka Gandhi and Ananth Kumar, in their 50s.

Eight are less than 50 years old, two among them — Irani and Harsimrat Kaur — are in the Cabinet. A prominent young face is BJP national treasurer Piyush Goyal, considered a member of Team Modi.

Senior BJP leaders L K Advani (86), the oldest member of the 16th Lok Sabha, and Murli Manohar Joshi (80), have failed to find a place in Modi's Cabinet.

Among ministers from BJP allies, Kaur is the youngest while LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan is the oldest at 67 years. Ashok Gajapati Raju (TDP) is 62 years old, and Anant Geete (Shiv Sena) is 63.

In this election, 2.31 crore first-time voters had registered for exercising their franchise.

There are 216 members in the 41-55 age group in the 16th Lok Sabha, while there are 212 in the 56-70 age group. The House has 41 septuagenarians.