Ghulam Nabi Azad

Ghulam Nabi Azad (born 7 March 1949, in Jammu and Kashmir, India) is an Indian politician from the Indian National Congress and was the Minister of Health and Family Welfare Presently he serves as the Leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha.

He was the Parliamentary Affairs Minister of India in the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh until 27 October 2005, when he was appointed as the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. After delivering victories in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, after which Andhra was divided in two parts (Telangana and Coastal Andhra). He led the party successfully in the 2002 Assembly election in Jammu and Kashmir.

Azad's forte is his organisational skills, having been the AICC general secretary for a record nine times and member of the powerful Congress Working Committee for 18 years.

Political career

As a Union minister, he steered successive Congress governments to victory in 21 no-confidence motions including the minority government of P. V. Narasimha Rao in the early 1990s.

Subramanian Swamy

Subramanian Swamy (born 15 September 1939) is an Indian politician from the state of Tamil Nadu. He is also an economist and a former cabinet minister. He was the President of the Janata Party. He merged his party on 11 August 2013 with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Swamy had served as a member of the Planning Commission of India and Cabinet Minister of India. He has written on foreign affairs of India dealing largely with China, Pakistan and Israel. He is also a published author.

Earlier in November 1978, Swamy was member of the Group of Eminent persons called to Geneva to prepare a report of the United Nations (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)) on Economic Co-operation between Developing countries (ECDC). Swamy also simplified trade procedures and formulated a new export strategy which became the forerunner of trade reform adopted subsequently. In 1994, Swamy was appointed as Chairman of the Commission on Labour Standards and International Trade by then Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao. This was perhaps for the first time that an Opposition Party member was given a Cabinet rank post by the ruling party. He also serves as chairman of the Board of Governors of the SCMS Group of Educational Institutions in Kerala.

Narendra Modi

Narendra Damodardas Modi (Gujarati: [nəreːnd̪rə d̪ɑːmoːd̪ərəd̪ɑːs moːd̪iː], born 17 September 1950) is the 15th and current Prime Minister of India, in office since 26 May 2014. Modi, a leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was the Chief Minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament (MP) from Varanasi. He led the BJP in the 2014 general election, which gave the party a majority in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of the Indian parliament) – a first for any party since 1984 – and was credited for 2014 BJP electoral victories in the states of Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir.

Since taking office as Prime Minister, Modi's administration has focused on reforming and modernising India's infrastructure and government, reducing bureaucracy, encouraging increased foreign direct investment, improving national standards of health and sanitation and improving foreign relations. Modi has been appreciated for starting initiatives like Swachh Bharat Mission, Make in India and Digital India. Earlier, as Chief Minister of Gujarat, Modi's economic policies (credited with encouraging economic growth in Gujarat) have been praised, although his administration has also been criticised for failing to significantly improve the human development in the state and failing to prevent the 2002 Gujarat riots. A Hindu nationalist and a former member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Modi remains a controversial figure domestically and internationally, despite his progressivism. Known for his tech savvy image, he is the second most followed politician on social media after U.S. President Barack Obama.