Smriti Irani gets charge of I&B ministry

Sidelined for more than a year after she was moved to textiles, Smriti Irani is back in another high-profile ministry — information and broadcasting.

Smriti assumed additional charge of the I&B ministry on Tuesday after M Venkaiah Naidu moved on to join the fray for the vice presidential poll.

“No (sound) bytes. Only pictures,” she told reporters, making a humble start with taking the additional charge of the I&B ministry.

Smriti was shifted to the textiles ministry from the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) in a Cabinet reshuffle in the first week of July last year. During her stint as the HRD minister, she remained in the limelight for many controversies.

The suicide of a research scholar Rohith Vemula, a Dalit, at the Hyderabad University in January 2016 came as a big blow to her image. Smriti faced public outrage as well as the Opposition’s ire over handling of the sequence of events that led to Vemula’s suicide in January 2016.

By giving an additional charge of the I&B ministry to Smriti, the Narendra Modi government has now once again posed confidence in her.