Union Minister George Kurien Resigns

way2barak, June 24: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s lone Christian minister in the Union cabinet, George Kurian, who served as Union minister of state for Minority Affairs and Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, resigned on Tuesday after he was denied a renomination following the expiration of his Rajya Sabha term.

The Modi cabinet now has no Christian or Muslim minister. In the previous Modi government, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, who was then the minority affairs minister resigned in 2022 after he was not renominated to the Rajya Sabha when his term ended.

When the third Modi government took office in 2024, it had five ministers from minority communities. This included two Sikhs (Hardeep Singh Puri, Ravneeth Singh Bittu), one Christian (Kurian) and two Buddhists (Kiren Rijiju and Ramdas Athawle). Both Kurian and Bittu’s terms have ended on June 21 and they have not been renominated to the Rajya Sabha.

“The President of India, as advised by the Prime Minister, has accepted the resignation of Shri George Kurian from the Union Council of Ministers, with immediate effect, under clause (2) of Article 75 of the Constitution,” Rashtrapati Bhavan said in a statement on Tuesday.

Earlier this month, the BJP named its 11 Rajya Sabha candidates but left out – two Union ministers – Kurian, who was representing Madhya Pradesh and Ravneet Singh Bittu, representing Rajasthan.

BJP nominated Tarun Chugh from Madhya Pradesh and Rajneesh Agrawal instead of Bittu from Rajasthan.

In a statement on Facebook, Kurian thanked Modi for making him a Union minister.

“I got the opportunity to meet the Prime Minister [Narendra Modi] and I submitted the resignation yesterday itself. Becoming a Union Minister was something I had never imagined, even in my dreams. Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose me to become a minister, and I conveyed my gratitude to him. Today, I was informed that the President has accepted my resignation,” he wrote.

Kurian was made Union minister after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, in which the BJP lost its majority and was cut down to 240 seats and was forced to form a coalition government.

The appointment of Kurian as a minister in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government was then seen as a move to woo the Christian community, and increase the saffron party’s influence especially among the Syrian Catholic denomination in Kerala where assembly elections were held in April.

Kurian belongs to the Syro-Malabar Catholic community and has close relationships with many Christian organisations and officials in the Catholic Church.