Modi Cabinet revamp: Jaitley retains Defence, Piyush Goel gets Railways

Nine new ministers took oath of office and four minsters got promoted to Cabinet rank on Sunday.

The oath of office was administered by President Ram Nath Kovind at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Four ministers, who were elevated to the Cabinet rank, are-Nirmala Sitharaman, Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.

Ahead of the oath taking ceremony on Sunday, the nine new ministers met PM Modi and party chief Amit Shah.

The new Ministers of State include Shiv Pratap Shukla, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, Virendra Kumar, Anantkumar Hegde, Raj Kumar Singh, Hardeep Singh Puri, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Satya Pal Singh and Alphons Kannanthanam.

Seven ministers have resigned from the Modi government since Thursday.

The list of ministers who had resigned includes Uma Bharti, Kalraj Mishra, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Sanjiv Kumar Balyan, Faggan Singh Kulaste, Bandaru Dattatreya, Mahendra Nath Pandey.

Apart from them, few other ministers had also resigned in 2017 that led to a number of vacancies in Modi's cabinet.

Manohar Parrikar resigned as the Defence minister to become the Goa chief minister.

Venkaiah Naidu also resigned from the Information and Broadcasting ministry and the central government as he became the Vice President of India.

Presently, Arun Jaitley is handling the two portfolios, finance and defence ministries.

Rajiv Pratap Rudy and Sanjeev Balyan both said they were told to resign by the party and they unquestioningly did so.

"It's not my decision, it's the decision of the party, and I will follow (it),"  Rudy told NDTV.

According to media reports,  Rudy and  Balyan are expected to be given key organisational roles in the BJP in preparation for the 2019 elections.