Prime Minister Narendra Modi sprang a surprise by elevating Nirmala Sitharaman, Rajya Sabha MP from Karnataka, as the first full-time woman defence minister when he expanded and reshuffled his Council of Ministers on Sunday.

By elevating Nirmala, Modi sought to deflect criticism that defence portfolio has been without a full-fledged Cabinet minister. She takes charge of a ministry that has predominantly seen male ministers. The late Indira Gandhi was the only exception when she handled the defence portfolio as the prime minister for sometime.

As defence minister, Nirmala joins the club of women defence ministers in 15 countries, including France, Italy, Germany and Australia. Hitherto, Finance Minster Arun Jaitley was handling the defence portfolio as additional charge after Manohar Parrikar shifted to Goa as chief minister in March.

Nirmala will now be part of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), which also includes Prime Minister Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and Jaitley. Modi also brought in Power Minister Piyush Goyal as the new railway minister in place of Suresh Prabhu, who was shifted to commerce and industry, which was held by Nirmala.

Like Nirmala, Goyal was an independent minister of state (MoS), who was elevated as Cabinet minister. Goyal is now tasked with ushering in changes to bring high safety measures in the railway system following a spate of accidents.

Goyal had won the prime minister’s praise for his work in the power sector as well as the transparent manner in which he handled the e-auctioning of coal mines.

Goyal will pilot the Railways out of the red by implementing several public-private-partnership projects, including the change of rolling stock and track renewal and upgrade of stations into commercial centres.

Nirmala named defence minister