Piyush Goyal given additional charge of Finance Ministry, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore is new I&B Minister

New Delhi: Railways and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal was on Monday given the additional charge of Finance and Corporate Affairs Ministry by the Narendra Modi government in the absence of Arun Jaitley, while Smriti Irani will now handle only the Textiles portfolio.

Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore has been made the new Information and Broadcasting Minister in place of Irani and SS Ahluwalia will be the Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, with Alphons Kannanthanam being relieved of the charge. Ahluwalia was earlier MoS in Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation.

Earlier, in July 2016, Irani was removed as the HRD minister and was replaced by Prakash Javadekar, who was the environment minister at that time.

Jaitley underwent a successful kidney transplant at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on Monday and is stable after the more than four-hour surgery, hospital authorities said. Jaitley, 65, who has been mostly working from home since early April 2018, was admitted to the hospital on Saturday. He had confirmed his illness in a tweet on April 6.

Earlier, Goyal was Minister of State with independent charge for Power, Coal, New and Renewable Energy. On 5 July 2016, during the second Cabinet reshuffle of the Modi ministry, he had taken over as the minister of Mines (MoS with independent charge) from Narendra Singh Tomar. Later, he became the minister of Railways on September 3, 2017, when Suresh Prabhu stepped down and was shifted to Commerce and Industry Ministry.

Rathore was made the MoS I&B in November 2014 and was appointed as a minister with independent charge for Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports in 2017.