After the expansion of the Union Cabinet, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday reconstituted the Cabinet committees and included Union minister Sarbananda Sonowal in the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs (CCEA).
Union ministers Kiren Rijiju, Virendra Kumar and Anurag Singh Thakur have been included in the new Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs, headed by defence minister Rajnath Singh.
Kiren Rijiju, who was elevated to the Cabinet rank, was given the charge of law & justice in the recent Cabinet reshuffle.
Modi has introduced new faces into the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs (CCPA) and trimmed down the powerful Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA).
While crucial ministries are not a part of the CCEA, the ministers belonging to alliance partners, Dalit and minority communities have not been included in the CCPA, say reports.
Apart from former Assam chief minister Union minister Sonowal, Prime Minister Modi has included Union ministers Smriti Irani, Giriraj Singh, Mansukh Mandaviya and Bhupender Yadav, who are new entries in the crucial CCPA.
Mandaviya, who was elevated to the Cabinet rank in the latest reshuffle of the Union Cabinet, was given charge of health, chemicals & fertilizers.
The previous CCEA had 11 members including Harsimrat Kaur of the SAD.
The new committee of the CCEA has only eight members.
The new committee of CCEA has Rajnath Singh (defence), Amit Shah (home), Nitin Gadkari (road transport and highways), Nirmala Sitharaman (finance and corporate affairs), Narendra Singh Tomar (agriculture and farmers welfare), S Jaishankar (external affairs), Piyush Goyal (commerce and industry and consumer affairs, food and public distribution, textiles) and Dharmendra Pradhan (education and skill development and entrepreneurship).
Rural development,railways, environment, forest & climate change ministries are not a part of the new panel of CCEA.
In the CCPA, apart from Sonowal, Irani, Giriraj Singh and Yadav, Prime Minister Modi has included Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Sitharaman, Tomar, Goyal and Pralhad Joshi.
The CCPA has no representatives from the alliance partners.
The earlier panel of CCPA had Sukhbir Singh Badal and Ram Vilas Paswan, who represented the Dalit community and Arvind Sawant.
According to reports, Rajnath, Shah and Sitharaman are members of every Cabinet committee formed by Modi.
Goyal is also on most of the panels including Cabinet Committee on Accommodation, CCEA, CCPA, Cabinet Committee on Investment and Growth and Cabinet Committee on Employment and Skill Development.