by Vijaylakshmi
Gajendra Singh Shekhawat has been given the charge of the Culture and Tourism Ministry in the Modi 3.0 cabinet which was sworn in yesterday. Shekhawat, a senior member of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, has been an elected member of parliament from Jodhpur Rajasthan continuously since 2014.
Shekhawat became the minister in the Modi cabinet in 2017 and has handled ministries of agriculture and farmers welfare and Jalshakti.
In his first response after being given the tourism and culture portfolio in the cabinet, Shekhawat tweeted, “The visionary PM hon’ble Shri Narendra Modi has obliged me by giving the important responsibility of the union ministry of culture and tourism. While performing my duties with utmost sincerity, I will make every possible effort to ensure progressive progress in the culture and tourism sector in building a developed India. Repeated congratulations and gratitude to my guide hon’ble Modi j.”
Shekhawat will be assisted in the tourism ministry by Suresh Gopi, a first time member of parliament from Thrissur and in the culture ministry by Rao Inderjit Singh who has been elected from Gurugram. Apart from the minister of state for culture, Singh will have the independent charge of ministry of statistics and programme implementation and ministry of planning.
While important ministers and their portfolios of the PM Modi 2.0 cabinet remained unchanged, the important new inductions include the appointment of K Rammohan Naidu as the Civil Aviation minister. He is the nominee of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in the cabinet representing the Srikakulam constituency in the Lok Sabha.
Apart from the Ministry of communications, Jyotiraditya Scindia, will also handle the charge of DoNER in the new Modi 3.0 cabinet.
Finance, Home, Defence, External Affairs, Road Transport and Highways, Railways, Commerce and Industry, etc. will be handled by the same set of senior ministers – Nirmala Sitharaman, Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, S Jaishankar, Nitin Gadkari, Ashwani Vaishnav, Piyush Goyal, respectively.
The tourism industry is also looking at the appointment of Gajendra Singh Shekhawat as the new culture and tourism minister as a positive signal as he comes from Rajasthan which is a pro-tourism state in the country.
In his remark, KB Kachru, president of Hotel Association of India (HAI) said, “Since the new tourism and culture minister is from Rajasthan which has a huge potential in tourism, we seek his support to make India really a must visit country for inbound tourism. We request him to be our ambassador to focus on opening doors for investment by helping us get our due in terms of infrastructure status. Similarly, we want the new tourism minister to push the states to grant tourism industry status.
“The number of jobs tourism and hospitality can create would give huge impetus to India’s economy and solve major unemployment problems.
We as HAI will shortly call on him to explain our continued willingness to partner with the government to achieve our common objective to grow India and achieve our right positioning. This is the time to work together.
