Four Cabinet, nine Ministers of State take oath (Lead)

New Delhi Sep 3 (IANS) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday expanded his council of ministers elevating four to the Cabinet and inducting nine new faces as Ministers of State.

The new Cabinet ministers are Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan Power Minister Piyush Goyal Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.

The new Ministers of State are former diplomat Hardeep Singh Puri Gajendra Singh Shekhawat (MP) former Mumbai Police Commissioner Satya Pal Singh (MP) former bureaucrat Alphons Kannanthanam as well as Ashwini Choubey Shiv Pratap Shukla Virendra Kumar Anant Kumar Hegde and Raj Kumar Singh (all MPs).

The new ministers and those elevated to the cabinet were sworn in by President Ram Nath Kovind at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

--IANS
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