Third Vajpayee ministry

The cabinet's size was later prompted the 91st Constitutional Amendment in 2003, which capped the number of ministers at 15% of the Lok Sabha strength.

Reshuffles

In a reshuffle on 29 September 2000, Venkaiah Naidu and Sushma Swaraj were inducted in the ministry as cabinet ministers and Shripad Yasso Naik (Goa), Satyabrata Mookherjee (West Bengal), Kanyakumari MP P.Radhakrishnan and film star-turned-MP U V Krishnam Raju (Andhra Pradesh) as minister of state. Later that year Uma Bharti was elevated to cabinet rank.[[File:^{[link removed]}]]

In a reshuffle in 2001 Vajpayee inducted Karia Munda, Ved Prakash Goyal, Syed Shahnawaz Hussain and Tapan Sikdar as Cabinet ministers and Anna Sahib Patil, Ashok Pradhan, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Rajiv Pratap Rudy as ministers of state.

In a reshuffle in 2002 he dropped four ministers and inducted four new cabinet ministers and nine new ministers of state. New cabinet ministers were: Shatrughan Sinha, Sahib Singh Verma, Jana Krishnamurthy, Balasaheb Vikhe Patil. The new ministers of state were: Basangouda Patil, Sanjay Paswan, Shripad Yasso Naik, Vinod Khanna, Nikhil Chaudhary, S.Thirunavukarasar, Anant Geete and A. K. Moorthy .

In a reshuffle in 2003 Vajpayee inducted three new cabinet rank ministers and five ministers of state . The new cabinet ministers were :Rajnath Singh, B.C. Khanduri and Subodh Mohite. The new ministers of state were : Chinmayanand Swami (BJP), Kailash Meghwal (BJP), Nagmani (Rashtriya Janata Dal-Democratic), Prahlad Singh Patel (BJP) and P.C. Thomas (Indian Federal Democratic Party).^{[link removed]}