Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare and Minister of Rural Development Shivraj Singh Chouhan, offering prayer during assuming charge, at his office in New Delhi on June 11, 2024. 
| Photo Credit: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar

Senior BJP leader Shivraj Singh Chouhan took charge of the Union Agriculture Ministry and Rural Development. He had held an informal meeting with the top bureaucrats of the two Ministries on Monday evening. 

Mr. Chouhan has his work cut out with the farmers’ organisations threatening to launch fresh protests demanding legal guarantee for minimum support price for all crops. A group of farmers, who were stopped from entering Delhi, has been camping at Khanauri near the Punjab-Haryana boundary for several weeks demanding the same. The last five years of the Narendra Modi government were marked by relentless protest, which led to their oldest allies the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) snapping ties with the BJP.

Speaking to the media persons, the former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh underlined that Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his day in office by authorising the release of the 17th instalment of PM Kisan Nidhi, which will benefit 9.3 crore farmers and distribute around ₹20,000 crore.

“The Prime Minister has resolved to double the income of farmers, work is going on continuously for that. We will all work together even faster on that and take every possible step for the welfare of farmers,” the Union Minister said. He also handed over BJP’s “Sankalp Patra” – a document detailing the party’s promises and guarantees to the top bureaucrats of the agriculture ministry. 

Later in the day, he also took charge of the Rural Development Ministry. Speaking to mediapersons at the Ministry, he said, in the last 10-year the BJP government has taken many “revolutionary steps” in the rural sector. In MGNREGS, he said more emphasis will be laid down on “asset creation”. 

The 65-year-old leader took oath as part of the Prime Minister’s Council of Ministers on Sunday, marking a significant milestone in his over three-decade-long political career.

The BJP leader won the Vidisha Lok Sabha seat for an impressive sixth time, securing a record margin of 8.21 lakh votes. Born on March 5, 1959, in a farming family in Jait village, Sehore district, Mr. Chouhan’s political journey began with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) when he was 13 years old. He was first elected to the Madhya Pradesh Assembly from Budhni constituency in 1990 and later became a Member of Parliament from Vidisha in 1991. He was re-elected from the same constituency in 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2004, winning his fifth Lok Sabha election with an impressive margin of over 2,60,000 votes.