India's foreign ministry sees major expansion in cabinet reshuffle

India's external affairs ministry has seen a major expansion in the cabinet reshuffle which took place onWednesday. The ministry led by cabinet minister Dr. S Jaishankar now has threeministers of state.

In the biggest cabinet reshuffle since 2014, it got twonew ministers of state - Meenakshi Lekhi and Rajkumar Ranjan Singh. The ministry already has one minister of state - V Muraleedharan. Lekhi will also be a minister of state in the ministry of culture, while RR Singh will have the additional responsibility of MoS in the ministry of education.

Meenakshi Lekhi is MP from high profile New Delhi Lok Sabha constituency and is a lawyer by profession. Rajkumar Ranjan Singh represents the inner Manipur constituency of Manipur state.

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MP Lekhi in the past had attended the Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen's swearing-in ceremony. In 2019she represented India at the Asian Parliamentary Assembly meet in Antalya, Turkeyand had hit out at Pakistan after it raked the Kashmir issue.

Wednesday's cabinet reshuffle saw 12 ministers resigning including heavyweights Prakash Javadekar who was the information and broadcasting minister along with Ravi Shankar Prasad who was the law and information technology ministerand Dr Harsh Vardhan who was the health minister.

Several new faces were inducted into the Union Cabinet. The new cabinet has 12 SC ministers, 8 ST ministers, 27 OBC, fivefrom the minority communities andelevenwomen ministers.