Three former Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers were appointed as cabinet ministers as part of the Union cabinet’s expansion on Wednesday. While former senior administrators Ashwini Vaishnaw and Ram Chandra Prasad Singh were appointed to cabinet positions, former bureaucrat turned politician Raj Kumar Singh was elevated to the position of Union cabinet Minister of Power and Minister of New and Renewable Energy.
Ashwini Vaishnaw, a 1994-batch IAS official, has been appointed as the new Minister of Railways, Information Technology and Telecom and Ramchandra Prasad Singh, a former IAS officer, has been appointed as the Minister of Steel in the Union cabinet.
Vaishnaw is a Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament and a former IAS officer from the Odisha cadre. As an administrator, he is well-known for having handled significant duties over the course of the last 15 years, and he is particularly well-known for his contribution to the PPP framework in the infrastructure industry.
Ramchandra Prasad Singh, a former top bureaucrat, is currently serving his second term as a member of the Rajya Sabha representing Bihar. Having served for more than 25 years in a variety of positions and sectors, Singh, a 1984 batch IAS officer took retirement prematurely in 2009. He is an alumnus of prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University where he studies Internation Relations.
When Nitish Kumar was Union Railway Minister in the late 1990s, Ram Chandra Prasad Singh was on a central deputation and became close to the then-Samata Party leader. Singh is a former UP-cadre IAS officer who belongs from Bihar’s Nalanda district.
On the other hand, Raj Kumar Singh, a former senior bureaucrat who became a politician, was appointed to the Union cabinet as Minister of Power and Minister of New and Renewable Energy. Former Union home secretary Singh was elected to the Lok Sabha twice, in 2014 and 2019, representing the Bihar constituency of Arrah. Singh served as the Union home secretary till his retirement in 2017.
In September 2017, he was appointed as Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Power, New and Renewable Energy, and Climate Change and Energy Efficiency and Conservation. From May 2019 to May 2020, Singh was in charge of the two ministries.
In addition, Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri and Foreign Affairs minister S Jaishankar are former Indian Foreign Service officers.
