A key face of BJP in Northeast, Kiren Rijiju again gets Cabinet berth in Modi 3.0

Itanagar, June 10 (IANS) Kiren Rijiju, one of the prominent BJP leaders in the northeastern region who was the Union Minister in the first and second term of Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government, once again got the Cabinet berth on Sunday as PM Modi along with 71 Ministers took oath of office at Rashtrapati Bhavan in the national capital. Rijiju was the Minister of Earth Sciences and Minister of Food Processing Industries, and served the Youth Affairs and Sports, Law and Justice Ministries as Independent charge and MoS Minority Affairs and Home Affairs in the last two Modi-led governments. Once a Congress stronghold, in the prestigious Arunachal West seat, Rijiju, who secured 2,05,417 votes, defeated state Congress President and party nominee Nabam Tuki by a margin of 1,00,738 votes in the recently held parliamentary polls. The 53-year-old BJP leader was elected from Arunachal West Lok Sabha constituency for the fourth term — 2004, 2014, 2019 and 2024. Rijiju began his political career in 1999, when he was elected to the Arunachal Pradesh Assembly from the Dibang Valley constituency. He was first elected to the 14th Lok Sabha from the Arunachal West Parliamentary constituency in 2004 but he lost the electoral battle in 2009 to Congress candidate Takam Sanjoy. Rijiju was re-elected to the 16th Lok Sabha in 2014 and was inducted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi into the Council of Ministers as a Minister of State in the Ministry of Home Affairs. A member of the Nyishi tribe, Rijiju, a passionate advocate of greater integration of the northeast region with the national mainstream, was again reelected in the 17th Lok Sabha in 2019 from the same Arunachal West constituency and was appointed as the Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Youth Affairs and Sports and Minister of State for Minority Affairs. In July 2021, he became the Cabinet Minister of Law and Justice in the second Modi ministry after a Cabinet reshuffle. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Rijiju, who received 169,367 votes, registered a victory, defeating Takam Sanjoy of the Congress by a margin of 41,738 votes. In the 2019 elections, he won the seat for the third time, and secured 2,04,553 votes. –IANS sc/pgh