Four Ministers of State upgraded to Cabinet rank

The BJP-led government today promoted four ministers, largely seen as performers, to the Cabinet, which also got a Muslim face with the induction of Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.

The elevation of Dharmendra Pradhan and Nirmala Sitharaman, Rajya Sabha MPs from Odisha and Karnataka, are also reflective of BJP's political calculation in these pollbound states.

Piyush Goyal, as a Minister of State with independent charge for power, coal, new and renewable energy and mines, is widely credited with astutely steering the Centre's rural electrification agenda and turning around the coal sector.

A chartered accountant by profession, 53-year-old Goyal was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Maharasthra last year for the second time.

Pradhan's rise comes on the back of his performance as a Minister of State of Petroleum and Natural Gas, which is spearheading Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet scheme, 'Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana', of providing LPG connections.

48-year-old Pradhan, who has emerged as the party's most prominent face in Odisha, is also praised in the government circles for having made the 'Give It Up' plan, on people giving up subsidised cooking gas voluntarily, a success.

His father, Debendra Pradhan, was a minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government and an MP from Odisha's Deogarh constituency.

In 2004, Pradhan was elected a member of the 14th Lok Sabha from the same constituency and held the seat till 2009, before he lost the subsequent poll. He was also a member of the Odisha legislative assembly between 2000 and 2004.

Sixty-year-old Naqvi, a Shia from Uttar Pradesh, is the lone Muslim face in the council of ministers of the Modi government. He has been handling the twin protfolios of Minority Affairs (Independent Charge) and Parliamentary Affairs.

One of the BJP's chief spokespersons before its ascent to power, Sitharaman (58) will be the BJP's first woman face in the Union Cabinet from south India. She is an alumna of the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

Karnataka, like Odisha, goes to polls in 2018 and the BJP is pulling out all stops to wrest power in these states from the Congress and the Naveen Patnaik-led BJD, which was a once a part of National Democratic Alliance (NDA).