Narendra Modi's cabinet: Jaitley to get Finance & defence, Rajnath to be Home Minister

NEW DELHI: Who all will be part of Narendra Modi's much awaited cabinet? What portfolios will the key NDA leaders Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Rajnath Singh, Ravishankar Prasad, Smriti Irani bag?

According to Times Now, senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley is likely to get multiple cabinet ministries. "Arun Jaitley will head Defence, Finance & Corporate Affairs," reported Times Now. BJP chief Rajnath Singh would be given the Home Ministry and Sushma Swaraj the Ministry of External Affairs, Times Now said.

While former Karnataka Chief Minister Sadananda Gowda could get the Railways portfolio, Nitin Gadkari is slated to get Surface Transport & Shipping. Smriti Irani will back the HRD ministry and Maneka Gandhi could get the Women & Child Welfare portfolio.

Ravishankar Prasad could get Telecommunications along with Law & Justice portfolio and Venkaiah Naidu will head Urban Development & Poverty Alleviation portfolios, Times Now reported. "Ananth Kumar could be the next Parliamentary Affairs Minister," reports suggested.

The MoS with Independent Charge include Rao Inderjit Singh, Gen (retd) V K Singh, Santosh Gangwar, Sripad Naik, Dharmendra Pradhan, Sarvanand Sonwal, Prakash Javadekar, Piyush Goel, Jitendra Singh and Nirmala Sitharaman.

The MoS are G M Sidheswara, Manoj Sinha, Upendra Kushwaha, P Radhakrishan, Kiran Rijiju, Krishna Pal Gujjar, Sanjay Kumar Balyan, Mansukhbhai Vasava, Rao Saab Danve, Vishnu Dev Sai and Sudarshan Bhagat.

However, there was no official confirmation either from the Rashtrapati Bhavan or Gujarat Bhavan where Modi has been holding hectic parleys over government formation for the last few days. The list of ministers without portfolios has been sent to Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Sources say that Modi will expand his Cabinet a few months later. The Narendra Modi-led government that will be sworn in on Monday could be very different and smaller than recent ones.