Modi Cabinet 2.0: Jyotiraditya Scindia given charge of Civil Aviation Ministry

Scindia is among the prominent new faces that have been inducted into the Modi Cabinet on Wednesday.

Jyotiraditya Scindia has been appointed as the new Civil Aviation Ministry by the Modi government. Hardeep Puri, who headed the Ministry of Civil Aviation, will now head Urban Development and Petroleum Ministry, the government announced. Scindia is among the prominent new faces that have been inducted into the Modi Cabinet on Wednesday. Interestingly, his father Madhavrao Scindia too had previously held the portfolio of civil aviation under the PV Narasimha Rao-led central government between 1991 and 1993. Scindia was born in 1971 and was educated from Harvard and Stanford institutions.

According to various reports, Scindia has traversed a long way after contesting his first election as a candidate of Congress party in the year 2002, a by-election in the Lok Sabha constituency of Guna, which was held after his father died in a plane crash. In September 2001, the private plane (a Beechcraft King Air C90) in which Madhavrao along with seven other people were flying, crashed on the outskirts of Mainpuri district in Uttar Pradesh, killing all of them. Jyotiraditya’s political career in the Congress party started following his father’s demise. And on 10 March last year, which marks the birth anniversary of his father, Scindia embarked on a new political journey with the BJP.

On Wednesday, as many as 43 ministers took oath in a major cabinet expansion-cum-reshuffle while 12 ministers were dropped from their positions. The newly appointed Modi 2.0 Cabinet Ministers include Narayan Tatu Rane, Sarbananda Sonowal, Virendra Kumar, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Jyotiraditya M Scindia, Ramchandra Prasad Singh, Pashu Pati Kumar Paras, Raj Kumar Singh, Kiren Rijiju, Hardeep Singh Puri, Mansukh Mandaviya, Parshottam Rupala, G. Kishan Reddy, Anurag Singh Thakur and Bhupender Yadav. The President, Ram Nath Kovind, administered the oath of office and secrecy to them along with other Ministers of State at a ceremony held in the Rashtrapati Bhavan yesterday.