Hyderabad: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's new Council of Ministers in his historic third term has laid an unprecedented emphasis on the southern part of the country, reflecting the outcome of the recently concluded assembly election. The new cabinet includes 13 ministers from south. This despite the BJP tally remaining exactly where it was in 2019 - 29 of the 129 southern seats.
Five of the 13 southern ministers - including former chief minister HD Kumaraswamy - are from Karnataka, BJP's only bastion in the south that delivered 19 of the 28 Lok Sabha seats to the NDA. The BJP won 17 seats and Kumaraswamy's Janata Dal (Secular) two. The state's ruling Congress won nine seats.
Besides Kumaraswamy, the Council of ministers has Nirmala Sitharaman and Pralhad Joshi, who were part of the previous Cabinet. Union Minister of State in the previous Modi government, Shobha Karandlaje, and former minister in the state government V Somanna - both from BJP - also took oath. TDP members of Parliament Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu and Pemmasani Chandra Sekhar and BJP Member of Parliament Bhupathiraju Srinivasa Varma were three ministers from Andhra.
Neighbouring Telangana is being represented by two ministers - G Kishan Reddy and Bandi Sanjay Kumar. There are even two ministers from Kerala. They are Suresh Gopi, who is the first BJP leaders to be elected to the Lok Sabha from Kerala, and George Kurian, who has been Kerala BJP's vice-president and part of the National Minorities Commission. L Murugan has been inducted as a minister from Tamil Nadu.
