Raksha Khadse is appointed MoS, and Mansukh Mandaviya is the new Sports Minister.
India’s next sports minister is Mansukh Mandaviya, who was the federal health minister in 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Mansukh Mandaviya, who was the union health minister during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, was named on Monday as India’s next sports minister, succeeding Anurag Thakur. By a margin of 3.83 lakh votes, 52-year-old Mandaviya defeated his closest Congress opponent, Lalit Vasoya, to win the Gujarat Lok Sabha seat in Porbandar.
In the new cabinet that was revealed on Monday, Mandaviya was also assigned leadership of the ministry of chemicals and fertilizers concurrently. Furthermore, under Mandaviya, Raksha Khadse, a three-time BJP MP from Raver in Maharashtra, was appointed Minister of State (Sports).
Raksha, 37, is the daughter-in-law of NCP leader Eknath Khadse, who has chosen to rejoin the BJP after being a member of the Sharad Pawar group.
By almost three lakh votes, she defeated her closest opponent, Shriram Patil of the NCP-Sharad Pawar alliance, to win the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
2013 saw the passing of her spouse, Nikhil Khadse.
While the nation was dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic in the middle of 2021, Mandaviya was given the responsibility for the health portfolio. He had taken over for Dr. Harsh Vardhan at that point, who had been removed from the Council of Ministers as part of a reorganization.
Then, during the severe second wave of COVID-19, Mandaviya’s ministry was entrusted with managing the vaccination program, increasing the supply of oxygen and medications. J P Nadda has been assigned the health ministry in the recently sworn-in administration.
This was Mandaviya’s first Lok Sabha election, and the polls recently ended. He was born on June 1, 1972, in Bhavnagar.
Prior to his nomination as a Gujarati member of the Rajya Sabha, he had been elected as an MLA in 2002 from the Palitana assembly constituency in the Bhavnagar district.
One of the 37 ministers removed from the third consecutive Modi government was the departing Thakur. After serving as the sports minister for almost three years, Thakur assumed the position on July 7, 2021.
During his time, India made history at the Olympics, winning a record seven medals in the Tokyo Games just weeks after he replaced Kiren Rijiju as minister in a cabinet upheaval.
He was also in charge when the government changed the requirements so that medal winners in every Khelo India competition could apply for government positions.
In an announcement made in March, Thakur stated that this action was in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “vision of a robust sports ecosystem, nurturing talent at grassroots level and turning sports into a lucrative and viable career option.” Under Thakur’s leadership as the minister of sports, India also began putting out a pitch to make a bold bid to become the first-ever host of the Olympic Games in 2036.
Confident that India will win the right to host, Thakur has consistently argued that the government’s flagship Khelo India initiative, which was introduced in 2017 and receives the majority of funding, deserves some of the praise for the nation’s rising sporting achievements.
Beginning his political career in 2008, Thakur has served five terms as the Himachal Pradesh representative for Hamirpur. He also predicted that the nation will rank among the top five medal-winning nations in the world in the near future.
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