Former foreign secretary S Jaishankar will be part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's council of ministers as he arrives att PM's high tea hosted for minister designates. PM Modi, after his stupendous victory in the Lok Sabha elections, will take oath with his council of ministers this evening at a grand ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan. 

Mr Jaishankar -- the country's foreign secretary from January 2015 to January 2018 - had helped resolve the incursion in Ladakh's Depsang and the Doklam stand-off through negotiations with China.

After retiring, he took over as the Tata Group's president of Global Corporate Affairs. In March, Mr Jaishankar had received the Padma Shri award from President Ram Nath Kovind. 

The 64-year-old had joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1977 and had stints as the high commissioner to Singapore and Ambassador to China and the US. 

He had played a key role in negotiating the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement that was signed by the UPA government in 2007.
 

Several first-timers have also made it to the government. Rita Bahuguna Joshi, Subrat Pathak, Rattan Lal Kataria, Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, RCP Singh, G Kishan Reddy, Som Parkash, Rameshwar Teli, Deboshree Chaudhary are among them.