Dharmendra Pradhan retains Petroleum; gets Steel

Dharmendra Pradhan has been given the post of Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas and Ministry of Steel in the 17th Lok Sabha under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Dharmendra Pradhan has been a member of the Sangh Parivar since 1983. He started his political career as an activist of the BJP’s student wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), and a former student union leader of Utkal University.

In 2004, he became an MP after contesting from the Deogarh constituency.

He lost the 2009 Assembly elections but his hard work propelled him to became the BJP national secretary and then the general secretary and in 2012, he was elected to the Rajya Sabha From Bihar.

After Narendra Modi's huge victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha Elections, he was made Union Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas.

It was his tremendous efforts that paved the way for BJP to have a significant foothold in the Odisha.

He led the implementation of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) scheme in Odisha which saw a sharp rise in LPG households from 20 lakh in 2014 to almost 78 lakh in February 2019.

The percentage went up from 20% in 2014 to 73%, showing Pradhan's tremendous efforts that yielded an excellent result for his party.

Also, his announcement of the dal-salt-rice package for the poor after the first phase of polls in the state was considered as a masterstroke as it had not figured in the BJP’s manifesto for the state, which was released a week before the promise.

The move came as a surprise to many and gave the party an added impetus in their campaign in Odisha, that reflected in the poll results as BJP won 23 seats in the assembly elections and 8 seats in the Lok Sabha Elections.

The President appointed Narendra Modi as Prime Minister and administered the Oaths of Office and Secrecy to the Members of the Council of Ministers. Here’s a quick lowdown at the new Modi Cabinet.

Cabinet Ministers

Raj Nath Singh
Amit Shah
Nitin Jairam Gadkari
D.V. Sadananda Gowda
Nirmala Sitharaman
Ram Vilas Paswan
Narendra Singh Tomar
Ravi Shankar Prasad
Harsimrat Kaur Badal
Thaawar Chand Gehlot
Subrahmanyam Jaishankar
Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’
Arjun Munda
Smriti Zubin Irani
Harsh Vardhan
Prakash Javadekar
Piyush Goyal
Dharmendra Pradhan
Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi
Pralhad Joshi
Mahendra Nath Pandey
Arvind Ganpat Sawant
Giriraj Singh
Gajendra Singh Shekhawat

Ministers of State (Independent Charge)

Santosh Kumar Gangwar
Rao Inderjit Singh
Shripad Yesso Naik
Jitendra Singh
Kiren Rijiju
Prahalad Singh Patel
Raj Kumar Singh
Hardeep Singh Puri
Mansukh L Mandaviya

Ministers of State

Faggansingh Kulaste
Ashwini Kumar Choubey
Arjun Ram Meghwal
General (Retd.) V. K. Singh
Krishan Pal
Danve Raosaheb Dadarao
G Kishan Reddy
Parshottam Rupala
Ramdas Athawale
Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti
Babul Supriyo
Sanjeev Kumar Balyan
Dhotre Sanjay Shamrao
Anurag Singh Thakur
Angadi Suresh Channabasappa
Nityanand Rai
Rattan Lal Kataria
V Muraleedharan
Renuka Singh Saruta
Som Parkash
Rameswar Teli
Pratap Chandra Sarangi
Kailash Choudhary
Debasree Chaudhuri