51 of 56 Central Ministers are crorepatis

Out of the 56 ministers in the newly formed Cabinet of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, 51 are crorepatis, with Harsimrat Kaur Badal -- Shiromani Akali Dal MP from Bathinda in Punjab -- being the richest with assets over Rs 217 crore, according to National Election Watch (NEW) and Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).

Next to the Punjab MP is Maharashtra Rajya Sabha Member Piyush Goyal with assets worth over Rs 95 crore.

Rao Inderjit Singh, elected from Gurugram, is the third richest with total declared assets worth Rs 42 crore followed by BJP President and Gandhinagar MP Amit Shah having assets worth over Rs 40 crore.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi ranked 46th in the list with declared total assets over Rs 2 crore.

A total of 10 Ministers have fewer assets than Modi, including Arjun Ram Meghwal MP from Bikaner in Rajasthan and Narendra Singh Tomar from Morena in Madhya Pradesh, with both having total declared assets worth about Rs 2 crore.

Sanjeev Kumar Balyan from Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh, Kiren Rijiju from Arunachal West in Arunachal Pradesh and Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti from Fatehpur in Uttar Pradesh had declared assets worth about Rs 1 crore.

The five non-crorepatis are Debasree Chaudhuri from Raiganj in West Bengal (Rs 61 lakh), Rameswar Teli from Dibrugarh in Assam (Rs 43 lakh), V. Muraleedharan from Kerala (Rs 27 lakh), Kailash Choudhary from Barmer in Rajasthan (Rs 24 lakh) and Pratap Chandra Sarangi from Balasore in Odisha (Rs 13 lakh).

--IANS

nks/rs/bg