President Pranab Mukherjee and PM Modi with the newly sworn-in ministers. (Image courtesy: Rashtrapati Bhavan)
A day after taking oath, most of the new ministers of the Narendra Modi government took charge of their ministries on Monday. Here's what they said:
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Manohar Parrikar, Defence Minister: "I feel as much as possible, we should manufacture here in India. Any country with good manufacturing (system) can come up economically by generating a lot of employment opportunities."
"I am defenceless against the press today, but I won't allow the country to be defenceless against its enemies," Mr Parrikar later said.
Suresh Prabhu, Railway Minister: "For the next one month, allow us (time) to do some action. One day, you'll say the Indian Railways is the best in the world. It is an engine of growth," he said.
Arun Jaitley, Information & Broadcasting Minister: "There was a time when most work of this work was done by Prasar Bharati and Doordarshan. But now we have to look at them as per the changes in information technology."
Jayant Sinha, Minister of State for Finance: "The primary areas of focus should be jobs. The second area that we have emphasised and have done well on is managing inflation and price rise."
Rajyavardhan Rathore, Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting: "Give me little time, once I understand and get the pulse of the whole thing... be assured that the vision of the Prime Minister is our objective."
Hansraj Ahir, Chemicals and Fertilizer Minister: "I'm yet to decide when to take charge. Will work in the interest of the farmers, will reduce prices wherever we can."
DV Sadananda Gowda, Law Minister: "Two issues are there. One is regarding electoral (reforms). The other with regard to the judiciary and executive. This is a very vast issue that has to be dealt with in such a manner that we should find out some mechanism to work out and see that certain new line of thinking is there."
The new ministers are a colourful mix of youth and experience and varied background. Besides Olympian Rathore and Harvard man Sinha, there are Vijay Sampla, who had worked as a plumber once and playback singer Babul Supriyo.
PM Modi met his council of ministers on Monday evening. He now has 65 ministers.
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