New Delhi: Both youngest and oldest members in the Narendra Modi Cabinet are likely to be women. The Cabinet list, which is being speculated in the corridors of power since morning, shows that Smriti Irani (38) is the youngest while Najma Heptullah (74) is the oldest member who will take oath on Monday evening.
Incidentally, both Irani — who unsuccessfully contested against Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi from Amethi — and Heptulla are Rajya Sabha members. Heptulla, who was with the Congress before joining the BJP, is the former deputy chairperson of the Upper House.
The list shows that 24 ministers are likely to be of Cabinet rank while 10 will be minister of state (MoS) with independent charge and remaining 11 would be MoS.
Though there is no official confirmation in this regard so far, the list, as claimed by BJP sources, appears to be more or less complete. It is learnt that the same list has been sent to the the Rashtrapati Bhavan where these ministers will take oath at 6pm.
BJP president Rajnath Singh, senior leaders Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and Ravishankar Prasad and former BJP chiefs Nitin Gadkari and Venkaiah Naidu are likely to take oath as Cabinet ministers at the forecourt of the Rashtrapati Bhavan in the presence of around 4000 guests.
Anant Geete of Shiv Sena — the only one from the party —will also take oath as a Cabinet minister. NDA allies including Lok Janashakti Party's Ram Vilas Paswan and Shiromani Akali Dal's Harsimrat Badal are also likely to find Cabinet berths.
The others who are in the list include Uma Bharti, Sadananda Gowda, Gopinath Munde, Kalraj Mishra, Maneka Gandhi, Ananth Kumar, Thawarchand Gehlot and Delhi BJP chief Harsh Vardhan.
Rao Inderjit Singh, General (retd) V K Singh, Santosh Gangwar, Sripad Naik, Dharmendra Pradhan, Sarvanand Sonwal, Jitendra Singh, Piyush Goel, Prakash Javadekar and Nirmala Sitharaman are among those who may take oath as MoS (Independent charge).
GM Sidheswara, Manoj Sinha, Upendra Kushwaha, P Radhakrishan, Kiran Rijiju, Krishna Pal Gujjar, Sanjay Kumar Balyan, Mansukhbhai Vasava, Rao Saab Danve, Vishnu Dev Sai and Sudarshan Bhagat are in the list of MoS.
