Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s freshly-minted Cabinet, has been given the Home Ministry, Rajnath Singh moved to Defence Ministry and Nirmala Sitharaman appointed the Finance Minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Cabinet, according to a Rashtrapati Bhawan communiqué.

S Jaishankar, widely acknowledged as the surprise entry in this team, has been given the Foreign Ministry. The retired career diplomat was part of a troika with Modi and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval that shaped foreign policy in the early years of the previous Modi government. BJP president Amit Shah will be the Home Minister in the newly constituted Cabinet under PM Narendra Modi. He is taking over from Rajnath Singh, who has been given the Defence Ministry. 

Emerging from the backstage, from where he directed the BJP’s ascent to its zenith, Shah will now remain at the forefront of Narendra Modi's second government.  Shah, who has been Modi's most trusted lieutenant since the 1980s when both started their political careers in Gujarat, made a grand entry in the prime minister’s group of ministers. 
While there was immense speculation about Shah being given a cabinet berth, one could argue that a series of recent events had pointed to such a possibility. 

The first was Shah contesting the Lok Sabha elections. Leaving his Rajya Sabha seat and getting into direct representation in the Lok Sabha was perhaps the first clear sign that Shah was getting into the active and administrative side of politics. The presence in Lok Sabha of an MP of his calibre, who won from the BJP's traditional Gandhinagar seat in Gujarat, indicated possible changes in the BJP. 

The second clear signal was the symbolism of Modi and Shah being together since the party's victory celebrations. After the election results were announced on May 23, the Modi-Shah duo had walked together to the BJP headquarters to greet and address party workers. The current No. 1 and No. 2 in the BJP had also travelled together to their respective constituencies of Varanasi and Gandhinagar. Apart from being a move to thank their voters, their travel together was seen as deliberations to delineate the broad contours of the Union Cabinet.