The Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government that took oath on Thursday has appointed Rajnath Singh as the defence minister of India. Singh will replace Nirmala Sitharaman. He was the home minister in the Modi government's first term.

He previously had served as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and was a cabinet minister in the AB Vajpayee government.

He has also served as the president of BJP twice -- 2005 to 2009 and 2013 to 2014. Singh began his career as a physics lecturer and used his long-term association with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to become involved with the Janata Party.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Singh won from Uttar Pradesh’s Lucknow constituency with a margin of 3,45,023 votes against Samajwadi Party’s Poonam Sinha. In 2014, Singh, who was the BJP president before Amit Shah took over, defeated Congress’s Rita Bahuguna Joshi by a whopping margin of over 2.7 lakh votes.

Modi was sworn in on Thursday as prime minister for a second term, helming a 58-member team of ministers, including him and BJP president Amit Shah who makes his debut in the Central government.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a landslide 303 seats out of the total of 543 while the opposition Congress party won just eight more seats than its abysmal 2014 performance. In all, BJP and its allies -- the NDA -- won 353 seats while the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance won 92 seats.

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First Published:May 31, 2019 1:34 PM IST