Cabinet Reshuffle Portfolio: Dharmendra Pradhan appointed education minister

NEW DELHI: After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s mega Cabinet reshuffle, Dharmendra Pradhan was sworn in to the new Union Cabinet and appointed the minister for education and skill development, on Wednesday. Pradhan is a BJP member of Parliament from Deogarh, Odisha.

Pradhan, 52, took oath along with 43 other new ministers joining the cabinet at the Rashtrapati Bhawan today. He held the petroleum and natural gas ministry portfolio earlier, a ministry he had taken charge of in 2014, during Narendra Modi's first term as prime minister.

Pradhan will steward a ministry that is responsible for restoring order and quality to the education sector, badly disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. He will also be responsible for seeing to the implementation of the National Education Policy 2020, cleared by the last Union Cabinet in July last year. Students are also looking to him for critical decisions on national-level entrance exams such as the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET 2021) for medicine, the admission test for central universities, CUCET 2021.

This is the first revamp of the council of ministers since PM Modi started his second term in May 2019. The new cabinet will be the youngest ever in India's history.

Former education minister Ramesh Pokhriyal’s last announcement before stepping down was of the JEE Main 2021 exam dates after its postponement due to COVID-19.

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