10 NOVEMBER 2014: Modi expands Ministry! 21 new faces!

Ø  Terming death penalty a “cruel and barbaric” punishment imposed mainly on the “marginalised and poor,” hundreds of eminent citizens, including Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, actor Aamir Khan, sociologist André Béteille, economist Jagdish Bhagwati and author Vikram Seth, issued a public statement opposing the practice. Arguing that more than 70 per cent of the countries in the world were abolitionist in law or practice, they said India “clings to the death penalty against a worldwide trend of abolition”.

Ø  First-time Jharkhand MP Jayant Sinha, who was sworn in as a Minister of State, is the son of former Union Finance and External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha. He is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and Harvard University, U.S.

Ø  President Pranab Mukherjee administered the oath of office to 21 Ministers, including four Cabinet Ministers, three Ministers of State (Independent Charge) and 14 Ministers of State. The Cabinet Ministers sworn in include former Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, former Union Minister Suresh Prabhu, Haryana leader Birendra Singh and BJP General Secretary J.P. Nadda. Mr. Prabhu, a Shiv Sainik, joined the BJP after he was sworn in. The new inductees are an eclectic mix. Mr. Parrikar and Jayant Sinha graduated from the Indian Institutes of Technology. Mr. Sinha who also studied at Harvard has more than a decade's experience at management consulting giant McKinsey and Company. Newly inducted Minister of State Hansraj Ahir was one of the people who exposed the coal block allocation scam. Besides Mr. Prabhu, the new Ministers of State Bandaru Dattatreya, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Rajiv Pratap Rudy have held portfolios in the Vajpayee government in the late 90s. Jaipur Rural MP Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, who was made a Minister of State on Sunday, retired as a colonel from the Grenadiers Regiment of the Army. In 2004, he won a Silver for the Double Trap shooting event at the Athens Olympics. He was honoured with Padma Shri in 2005. The inclusion of first-time MP Vijay Sampla in the Narendra Modi Ministry, leading to jubilation in the Hoshiarpur constituency in Punjab, has sent a major political signal that the BJP is eyeing the nearly 32 per cent Dalit vote as it may go it alone in Assembly election due in the State in early 2017. True to speculations the fiery Bharatiya Janata Party leader from Bihar Giriraj Singh, a long-time loyalist of the Prime Minister, has found a place in the Narendra Modi cabinet. The MP from Nawada is known as Modi’s clone in Bihar with his bold political moves and mannerisms. He was the first state BJP leader and minister in the then NDA government to openly support Mr Modi as the party’s prime ministerial candidate.

Ø  India test-fired the nuclear weapon-capable Agni-II ballistic missile for its full strike range of 2,000 km from Wheeler Island off the Odisha Coast. Personnel of the Strategic Forces Command (SFC) fired the surface-to-surface missile from a mobile launcher. The 20-metre-tall Agni-II zoomed to an altitude of 600 km and began its descent before splashing near its pre-designated impact point in the Bay of Bengal with “two-digit accuracy.”