TNI Bureau: The Modi 3.0 kicked off yesterday with Narendra Modi taking oath as the Prime Minister of India for a historic third term. Along with him, 71 council of Ministers including three from Odisha were administered the oath and secrecy of the office by President Drpoupadi Murmu. The three ministers from the State who took oath are Dharmendra Pradhan, Ashwini Vaishnaw and Jual Oram.
While Dharmendra Pradhan and Jual Oram are the Lok Sabha members, Ashwini Vaishnaw is from Rajya Sabha.
Pradhan, who won the Lok Sabha election from Sambalpur by defeating BJD’s heavyweight leader Pranab Prakash Das, had earlier served as a Union Minister in Modi’s two previous terms, handling key portfolios such as petroleum and natural gas, education and skill development.
Likewise, Jual Oram, who was also the member of the 12th, 13th, 14th Lok Sabha and 16th Lok Sabha, served as the Union Cabinet Minister twice in the past. In 1999, Oram was assigned to head the tribal affairs ministry during Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government and was given the tribal affairs portfolio again in 2014 when Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister for the first time.
Similarly, IAS officer-turned-politician Ashwini Vaishnaw, who has been representing Odisha in the Rajya Sabha since 2019, also took oath as a Cabinet Minister in the Modi Cabinet 3.0. Earlier, he had served as Minister of Railways, Communications Minister, and Electronics & Information Technology Minister from 2022 to 2024.