Narendra Damodardas Modi was sworn in this evening as Prime Minister of India for a second five-year term following the sweeping victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP led by him in parliamentary elections last week
NEW DELHI, (Pakistan Point News - 30th May, 2019) Narendra Damodardas Modi was sworn in this evening as Prime Minister of India for a second five-year term following the sweeping victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP led by him in parliamentary elections last week.
The President of the Republic, Ram Nath Kovind, administered the oath of office and secrecy to Modi at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the presidential palace, watched by 8,500 specially invited guests that included heads of state and government of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation or BIMSTEC member states, BIMSTEC is an organisation of countries which are dependent on the resources and facilities of the Bay of Bengal. Its members are Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand and India. Nepal and Bhutan, which are landlocked, but entitled to benefits from the waters of the Bay of Bengal under international treaties are also its members.
India’s new government led by Modi has a total 57 ministers in addition to the Prime Minister. President Kovind administered the oath of office and secrecy to all the new ministers in a ceremony which lasted more than two hours. He will announce the portfolios of the new council of ministers later tonight on the advice of the Prime Minister.
The oath-taking ceremony on the sprawling open forecourt of the presidential palace was attended by leaders of opposition parties which lost the elections, notably former two-term Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the President of the main opposition Congress Party, Rahul Gandhi.
Modi first became Prime Minister of India in May 2014 in a similar election victory. His re-election was hotly contested and represented the biggest exercise in adult franchise in human history in view of India’s huge population.
The election process from the nomination of candidates by political parties to the counting of votes took nearly one and a half months, but was mostly peaceful
