On a significant Sunday, over a dozen parliamentarians representing themselves from Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Telangana, and Tamil Nadu managed to secure a place in the Council of Ministers headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This move has been intended to give importance to BJP's coalition partners in southern parts of India.
Prominent leaders at the oath ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi, apart from Kumaraswamy, included senior JD(S) leader and former Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, into the Cabinet, and experienced faces of BJP, Nirmala Sitharaman and Pralhad Joshi, who were earlier in the Cabinet.
The inclusion also had two ministers of state in the Union Minister of State in the outgoing Modi government, Shobha Karandlaje and former state minister V Somanna, both of them belonging to the BJP.
Aside from that, Sitharaman, Kumaraswamy, and Joshi have been given Cabinet rank, while Karandlaje and Somanna would be of a minister of state rank. The selection of Kumaraswamy in the JD(S) quota of NDA is influential; he belongs to the powerful Vokkaligas.
In Karnataka, where NDA bagged 19 out of 28 Lok Sabha seats, the BJP won in 17 constituencies, JD(S) in 2, while the dominant ruling Congress only in nine seats.
From Andhra Pradesh, two TDP MPs K Rammohan Naidu and Chandrasekhar Pemmasani were inducted into the council of ministers along with BJP's much-expected face Srinivasa Varma. Pemmasani with Rs 5700 crore asset is the richest minister to be inducted into the council of ministers in the 18th Lok Sabha.
From Kerala, the only BJP MP who won from Zone Sabha, Suresh Gopi, and party leader George Kurian, both entered the ministry. Despite Kurian not being an MP, his arrival at the ministry is part of the BJP's tactics to nurture Christian votes.
To add to the list of central ministers, the Modi 3.0 government lists representatives from Telangana, including Kishan Reddy and Bandi Sanjay Kumar, that had furthered the party stronghold in the region.
From Tamil Nadu, L Murugan was also made Minister of State, adding to the many-state representation in the new government.
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