New Delhi: Arun Jaitley has turned out to be the most important person in the new government after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with three heavy portfolios of finance, defence and corporate affairs, it was announced Tuesday.
The Rashtrapati Bhavan released the portfolio allocation of 46 ministers, including 24 cabinet ministers, of the government sworn in Monday evening. Sushma Swaraj is the new foreign minister and Rajnath Singh will head the home ministry.
Modi has kept with him, like some of his predecessors, the portfolios of personnel, public grievances and pensions as well as the departments of atomic energy and space besides any other department not allocated to any minister.
He will, as the presidential communique states, be in charge of "all important policy issues".
Rajnath Singh, the BJP president who is likely to hand over the party baton to someone else, gets the important portfolio of home (interior) and Sushma Swaraj gets both external affairs and overseas Indian affairs.
M. Venkaiah Naidu, a former BJP president, also gets a lot of responsibility with urban development, housing and urban poverty alleviation as well as parliamentary affairs.
