Minister of Defence (India) Minister of Defence (India) The Minister of Defence is the head of the Ministry of Defence of the Government of India. They are often assisted by a Minister of State for Defence and less-commonly, the lower-ranked Deputy Minister of Defence. The defence minister additionally serves as President of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, and as Chancellor of the Defence Institute of Advanced Technology and of the National Defence University. The first defence minister of independent India was Baldev Singh, who served in Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's cabinet during 1947–52. Nirmala Sitharaman, the current defence minister of India is
Prime Minister of India National Highways Development Project (NHDP) and the "Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana" (PMGSY; IAST: ; Prime Minister Rural Road Scheme), for the development of roads. But during his reign, the 2002 Gujarat communal riots in the state of Gujarat took place; resulting in the death of about 2,000 deaths. Prime Minister Vajpayee's tenure as prime minister came to an end in May 2004, making him the first non-Congress PM to complete a full five-year tenure. In the 2004 election, the Congress emerged as the largest party in a hung parliament; Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA)—with outside support from the Left