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NEW DELHI, MAY 27 -
India's new Prime Minister Narendra Modi named Arun Jaitley as finance
minister on Tuesday, tasking his close party colleague with reviving
investment in an economy that has been growing at its slowest rate in a
decade.
Jaitley, 61, will also lead the defense ministry as well as corporate
affairs, the government said in a statement on Modi's cabinet that was
sworn in on Monday.
Modi campaigned on a promise to cut bureaucratic sloth and fight
corruption. Analysts say Modi's huge election victory gives him the
mandate to advance reforms that stalled under the previous Congress-led,
scandal-ridden administration of his predecessor, Manmohan Singh.
One of the top corporate lawyers in the country, Jaitley served as a
commerce minister in a previous government of the Bharatiya Janata
Party.
A day after his inauguration, Modi was due to meet Pakistan's Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif, who was among regional leaders invited to the
ceremony, amid hopes of a thaw in ties between the two nuclear-armed
countries.
Modi named BJP veteran Sushma Swaraj as foreign minister. The Hindu
nationalist BJP has long advocated tough positions on national security
and Pakistan, in particular.
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