Party veterans, ex-babus in Modi's chosen nine

New Delhi: Nine new faces were on Sunday inducted into the Union Council of Ministers including four former senior bureaucrats and BJP leaders from Karnataka, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh which are scheduled go to polls next year.

Sixty-four-year-old Ashwini Kumar Choubey was a health minister in Bihar. A BJP veteran, he was born at Dariyapur in Bhagalpur and did BSc (Hons) in zoology from Science College, Patna University.

Virendra Kumar, 63, is the Lok Sabha MP from Tikamgarh in Madhya Pradesh.

From being the convenor of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in Sagar in 1977-79 to becoming a Union minister, it has been a long journey for Kumar, who was elected for a sixth Lok Sabha term in 2014.

Sixty-five-year-old Shiv Pratap Shukla is a Rajya Sabha member from the electorally crucial Uttar Pradesh. The lawyer-social worker was earlier a minister in UP. He was appointed a vice president of UP chapter of the BJP in 2012.

Anant Kumar Hegde, 49, has been a member of the 11th, 12th, 14th, 15th and 16th (present) Lok Sabha from Uttara Kannada in Karnataka. He is an agriculturist by profession.

Satya Pal Singh, 61, is a Lok Sabha MP from Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh. A 1980-batch Maharashtra cadre IPS officer, he resigned as the Mumbai Police chief to take a plunge into politics.

He was honoured by the central government in 2008 for his services with the Antrik Suraksha Sewa Padak and a special medal for extraordinary work in naxal-hit areas of Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh in 1990. Singh has written books, including on topics like tribal conflict resolution and naxalism.

Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, 49, is a Lok Sabha member from Jodhpur in Rajasthan. He is also a national general secretary of the farmers' wing of the BJP. He has MPhil and MA degrees in philosophy from Jai Narain Vyas University, Jodhpur.

Hardeep Singh Puri, 65, is a 1974-batch officer of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) and served as India's Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 2009 to 2013.

K J Alphons Kannanthanam, a Kerala-cadre IAS officer from the 1979 batch, quit the service in 2006 to join politics. He was also a practicing advocate.