Anurag Thakur, Irani, among key ministers likely dropped from Modi 3.0 cabinet

Most of the Union ministers in the previous Modi-led government, including Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Piyush Goyal, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Nirmala Sitharaman, Mansukh Mandaviya and others, were at the PM’s residence, who were invited ahead of the swearing-in ceremony of his third-term. However, a few others, including Union minister of information and broadcasting and youth affairs and sports Anurag Thakur, Union minister of women and child development Smriti Irani, were not there.

Lawmakers who are set to take oath as ministers later in the day on Sunday were invited to the PM’s residence for tea, a custom he has followed before the cabinet formation exercise since 2014.

Thakur won Himachal Pradesh’s Hamirpur seat for the fifth consecutive time, defeating his nearest Congress rival Satpal Raizada by a margin of 182,357 votes. His name finds a miss from the list of ministers in Modi’s new cabinet.