Former railway minister Suresh Prabhu, who was shunted to a lighter Ministry of Commerce and Industry on Sunday in the third Cabinet reshuffle undertaken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has said that he was not demoted, but he got an important mandate. In interviews with the media, Prabhu glossed over his achievements as railway minister. He promised to bolster PM Modi’s Make in India initiative as commerce minister.
In an interview, Suresh Prabhu dismissed media interpretation of his shifting to the commerce ministry as a demotion. He said he has been given an important assignment and he will promote manufacturing in the country.
Talking about his tenure as the Union Railway Minister, he said that under his leadership, the Railways could achieve 16,500 km of doubling and tripling. He said that the proposal for turning all meter gauge tracks to broad gauge has already been sanctioned. He said that a lot of investment had been made in modernisation.
Suresh Prabhu had offered resignation after a spate of railway derailments in the last month. He had informed that PM Modi had asked him to wait. On this, he said that he took the moral responsibility of the accidents, though, the fault was not directly his.
Meanwhile, the former minister of state for commerce ministry, Nirmala Sitharaman is elated at her promotion as the defence minister. She said she was overwhelmed and humbled.
“I am just overwhelmed and humbled. I can serve the country with something which is constantly on the top of my mind,” she said.
In the third ministerial reshuffle, nine new ministers were sworn in, while four MoS were promoted to Cabinet rank. Nirmala Sitharaman, Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi were elevated to the Cabinet rank. Goyal replaced Suresh Prabhu as Railways Minister with an additional charge of the Coal portfolio. Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has been made the Union Minority Affairs Minister, whereas Dharmendra Pradhan is the petroleum minister. Pradhan also got the Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Ministry. Uma Bharti gets the charge of Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation.
Nine new faces–Hardeep Singh Puri, RK Singh, Shiv Pratap Shukla, Alphons Kannanthanam, Satyapal Singh, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Anant Kumar Dattatreya Hegde and Virendra Kumar–were sworn in as ministers.
