Jyotiraditya Madhavrao Scindia was inducted into the Union Cabinet on Wednesday. The BJP Rajya Sabha member was made the Civil Aviation minister in Prime Minister Modi’s major cabinet rejig. 

The former Congress-MP was amongst the 43 others who took oath on Wednesday. Twelve ministers including Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, IT and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and I&B Minister Prakash Javadekar were dropped from the union cabinet. Out of the 43 ministers, 33 were new inductees. The swearing ceremony was held in the Darbar Hall of the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Also Read | PM Modi’s big cabinet reshuffle: The ministers’ mix decoded

After this expansion, the first reshuffle of the government elected in 2019, the total strength of PM Modi’s  Council of Ministers stands at 78.

Jyotiraditya Scindia is a member of the Rajya Sabha, representing the state of Madhya Pradesh. Before his defeat in the 2019 general elections, Scindia represented the Guna constituency in Madhya Pradesh. He left the Congress to join the BJP last year. 

Also read: No ‘backbencher’, Jyotiraditya Scindia flies high with Aviation

Scindia graduated from Harvard College in 1993,  where he obtained a BA degree in Economics.  In 2001, he received a Master of Business Administration from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. His political career began when on 30 September 2001, the Guna constituency fell vacant due to the death of Scindia’s father, sitting MP Madhavrao Scindia, in an airplane crash in Uttar Pradesh.

On December 18, 2020, he formally joined the INC & pledged to uphold the “secular, liberal and social justice values”. He has since then served as minister of state in various capacities.

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