The Bharatiya Janata Party’s landslide election victory will usher in a new government expected to steer India sharply to the right after 10 years of rule by the leftist Congress party.
Incoming premier Narendra Modi has never been in government at national level after spending the last 13 years as chief minister of Gujarat state.
The following is a list of some of the men and women who are likely to emerge as key players in the new Modi administration:
Amit Shah: Modi’s most trusted aide, Shah is tipped to become his boss’s cabinet enforcer with a post in the Prime Minister’s Office.
Their association dates back to the 1980s when they were both part of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a volunteer Hindu nationalist organisation that is seen as the ideological fountainhead of the BJP.
A portly and bearded 50-year-old, Shah is highly regarded by Modi as a political strategist and was in charge of the BJP’s campaign in the electorally crucial state of Uttar Pradesh.
However Shah is tainted by allegations from his tenure as home minister in Gujarat, including claims that he masterminded extra-judicial killings. He denies all charges.
Arun Jaitley: Widely tipped to become finance minister, Jaitley was one of India’s most succesful lawyers before he became leader of the opposition in India’s upper house of parliament, the Rajya Sabha.
The 61-year-old is also one of the most articulate and liberal voices of the BJP and is often the party’s choice to address the media and defend Modi’s sometimes controversial track record.
Jaitley is a former vice president of India’s powerful cricket board.
Sushma Swaraj: Swaraj is the current leader of the opposition in the lower house of parliament and the BJP’s most senior woman leader. Now aged 62, she became India’s youngest cabinet minister in 1977 after the end of Indira Gandhi’s emergency government.A fiery orator, Swaraj was one of the few BJP leaders to oppose publicly Modi’s elevation as the party’s prime ministerial candidate.
While some analysts have predicted that she could be made to pay for her apparent disloyalty, others say she is too senior for Modi to snub and could become foreign minister.
Rajnath Singh: BJP president and arguably the most high-ranking member leader of the party after Modi, Singh is a former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and has previously served as federal agriculture minister.
Singh, 62, has been tipped to become Modi’s next home minister and was one of a handful of BJP leaders to be invited to talks with his prospective new boss in Gujarat after the end of voting on Monday.
Like Modi and Shah, he also rose through the ranks of the RSS and was a physics lecturer before becoming a politician.
