NEW DELHI: Narendra Modi was sworn in as India’s prime minister on Sunday for a third term, along with 71 ministers, after a shock poll setback that will test his ability to ensure policy certainty in a coalition government in the world’s most populous nation.
Thirty of the 71 are Cabinet Ministers, five independent charge, and 36 Ministers of State. The portfolios were to be announced.
Modi will head a coalition government, for the first time since he became Prime Minister in 2014 following a huge “Brand Modi” victory after 10 years of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) rule.
He is the second Prime Minister after Jawaharlal Nehru to be elected for a third term in a row.
President Droupadi Murmu administered the oath of office to Modi at a ceremony at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the president’s palace in New Delhi, attended by thousands of dignitaries, including the leaders of seven regional countries, Bollywood stars and industrialists.
“Honoured to serve Bharat,” Modi posted on X, minutes before he was sworn in, referring to India’s name in Indian languages.
Supporters cheered, clapped and chanted “Modi, Modi” as the name of the 73-year old leader, dressed in a white kurta tunic and blue half jacket, was called to take his oath.
Modi was followed by senior ministers in the previous government: Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Nirmala Sitharaman, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, JP Nadda, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Manohar Lal Khattar and Piyush Goyal, among others.
Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, JP Nadda, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Nirmala Sitharaman, S Jaishankar, Manohar Lal Khattar, HD Kumaraswamy, Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan, Jitan Ram Manjhi, Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh,
Sarbananda Sonowal, Dr Virendra Kumar, Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu, Pralhad Joshi, Jual Oram, Giriraj Singh, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Bhupender Yadav, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Annapurna Devi, Kiren Rijiju, Hardeep Singh Puri, Mansukh Mandaviya, G Kishan Reddy, Chirag Paswan and CR Patil.
5 ministers of state with independent charge:
Rao Inderjit Singh, Jitendra Singh, Arjun Ram Meghwal, Prataprao Ganpatrao Jadhav and Jayant Chaudhary.
36 ministers of state:
Jitin Prasada, Shripad Naik, Pankaj Chaudhary, Krishan Pal Gurjar, Ramdas Athawale, Ram Nath Thakur, Nityanand Rai, Anupriya Patel, V Somanna, Dr Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani, SP Singh Baghel, Shobha Karandlaje, Kirti Vardhan Singh, BL Verma, Shantanu Thakur, Suresh Gopi, L Murugan, Ajay Tamta, Bandi Sanjay Kumar, Kamlesh Paswan, Bhagirath Chaudhary, Satish Chandra Dubey, Sanjay Seth, Ravneet Singh Bittu, Durga Das Uikey, Raksha Khadse, Sukanta Majumdar, Savitri Thakur, Tokhan Sahu, Rajbhushan Chaudhary, Bhupathiraju Srinivasa Varma, Harsh Malhotra, Nimuben Jayantibhai Bambhaniya, Murlidhar Mohol, George Kurian and Pabitra Margherita.
HD Kumaraswamy of the Janata Dal (Secular), who took oath after Khattar, was the first leader from any of the BJP’s allies in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to take oath. Soon after, Janata Dal (United) leader Lalan Singh, a close aide of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, also took oath.
Sarbananda Sonowal was the first leader from the northeast to take oath, Kiren Rijiju the second.
Virendra Kumar, a prominent Scheduled Castes face of the BJP and eight-time MP, was inducted into the Narendra Modi government. He won the election from Madhya Pradesh’s Tikamgarh reserved seat.
Jyotiraditya Scindia’s induction into the Modi 3.0 council of minister has cemented his importance in the BJP since he left the Congress four years ago, marking the beginning of his second stint in the cabinet.
Hardeep Singh Puri, the former diplomat who helped India navigate through two back-to-back oil crises, was among the ministers sworn in today.
Modi, who started as a publicist of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is only the second person after independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru to serve a third straight term as prime minister.
Modi secured the third term in elections that concluded on June 1 with the support of 14 regional parties in his BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), unlike in the previous two terms when his party won an outright majority.
The outcome is seen as a big setback to the popular leader as surveys and exit polls had predicted BJP would secure even more seats than in 2019.
COALITION CHALLENGES
Modi delivered world beating growth and lifted India’s global standing but appeared to have missed a step at home as a lack of enough jobs, high prices, low incomes and religious faultlines pushed voters to rein him in.
When Modi was the chief minister of the western state of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014, BJP enjoyed strong majorities, allowing him to govern decisively.
Modi’s new term as prime minister, therefore, is likely to be fraught with challenges on building consensus on contentious political and policy issues in the face of different interests of regional parties and a stronger opposition, analysts say.
Some analysts worry that the fiscal balance in the world’s fastest growing economy could also come under pressure due to demands for higher development funds for states ruled by the NDA’s regional partners and a possible push by BJP to spend more on welfare to woo back voters it lost in this year’s election.
While the broad focus on building infrastructure, manufacturing and technology could continue, “contentious reforms could be delayed”, said Samiran Chakraborty, Chief Economist, India, at Citi Research.
“The BJP’s major coalition partners are politically unpredictable, sometimes working with the BJP and sometimes working against them,” added Rick Rossow, the Chair in US-India Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“The larger parties that will be a part of his coalition are mostly agnostic on national-level issues and should not be applying a brake on economic reforms or security ties with the United States, Japan, and other key partners,” he said.
“We have won the majority ... but to run the country it is unanimity that is crucial ... we will strive for unanimity,” Modi said on Friday after the NDA formally named him coalition head.
