Ministry of External Affairs now has 3 Ministers of State

Meenakshi Lekhi, Rajkumar Ranjan Singh and V Muraleedharan are the 3 Ministers of State

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar now has as many as three Ministers of State to help him manage New Delhi’s engagements with the world – Meenakshi Lekhi, Rajkumar Ranjan Singh and V Muraleedharan after the latest Cabinet reshufle.

Muraleedharan, who was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Maharashtra, has been the Minister of State for External Affairs since May 2019, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government commenced its second term in office. Lekhi and Singh, who were elected to the Lok Sabha from Delhi and Manipur respectively, got the external affairs portfolio after being sworn in as the new Ministers of State on Wednesday.

Lekhi is a law graduate from Delhi University and is a Supreme Court lawyer, apart from being a politician. Singh has a doctorate degree in geography from Gauhati University.

Jaishankar’s predecessor Sushma Swaraj had two Ministers of State – V K Singh and M J Akbar – to help her, when she was holding the office of the External Affairs Minister during the Modi Government’s first term in power.

Akbar, however, had to resign in October 2018 after being accused of sexually harassing woman journalists during his stint as editor of newspapers.

Jaishankar, a diplomat-turned-politician, replaced Swaraj as the Minister of External Affairs after Modi led the Bharatiya Janata Party to victory in the 2019 elections and won a second term in the office of the Prime Minister.

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