AMN /NEW DELHI
Many old faces in the Prime Minister Modi previous ministry could not make it to new ministry. Among them are Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley (who has already requested to be kept out of ministry), Uma Bharti, Vijay Goyal, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, JP Nadda, Radha Mohan Singh, Maneka Gandhi, Jayant Sinha, Suresh Prabhu, Anupriya Patel, Anant Geete, Jual Oram, Mahesh Sharma, Manoj Sinha, Alfons Kannanathnam , P. Radhakrishnan, SS Ahluwalia, Ramesh Jigjinagi, Ram Kripal Yadav, Hansraj Ahir, Jaswant Singh Bhabher, Sudarshan Bhagat, Vijender Kumar, Ananth Kumar Hegde, Ajay Tamta, PP Choudh Rai, Subhash Bhamre, Satyapal Singh, Vishnu Dev Sai, Hari Bhai Chaudhary, Rajen Gohain, Shiv Pratap Shukla, Vijay Sampla, Krishna Raj and CR Chaudhari.
According to sources Maneka Gandhi will be the pro-tem or interim Speaker of the Lok Sabha instead of minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new government.
Maneka Gandhi has been a minister in four governments. This time, she was missing from the group of ministers who were sworn in at Rashtrapati Bhavan today along with PM Modi.
The former minister won narrowly from Sultanpur in Uttar Pradesh in the national election. Sultanpur was the constituency of her son Varun Gandhi, who contested and won from Pilibhit.
Maneka Gandhi is the estranged sister-in-law of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi; her husband Sanjay Gandhi was Indira Gandhi’s younger son and the brother of Sonia Gandhi’s husband Rajiv Gandhi.
She landed in a controversy during her campaign when she was caught on camera apparently warning a gathering of Muslims that she would “win anyway” but if that win was without the vote of Muslims, “things will turn sour”.
An avid animal rights activist, Ms Gandhi in her earlier stints has been minister for Social Justice and Empowerment, Culture, Environment, Women and Child Development and also Programme Implementation.