S Jaishankar today took charge as the External Affairs Minister a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi retained him in his cabinet in his historic third term.
Mr Jaishankar is among the senior BJP leaders, including Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Nirmala Sitharaman, and Nitin Gadkari, who have retained the ministries they handled in the previous government.
Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw also assumed his office in Delhi.
Ministries have been allocated to the 71 ministers who joined the Modi 3.0 in a grand swearing-in ceremony on Sunday with the Prime Minister himself handling the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, the Department of Atomic Energy and the Department of Space.
Among new entrants to the Union Cabinet are former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who has got Agriculture and Rural Development Ministries, and BJP president JP Nadda, who has returned to the Health Ministry.
