Arun Jaitley, an urbane corporate lawyer and close party colleague of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was formally named to the key finance post following a sweeping election victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Modi campaigned on a promise to cut bureaucratic sloth and fight corruption. Analysts say his party's decisive win gives him the mandate to advance reforms that stalled under the scandal-ridden government of his predecessor, Manmohan Singh. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said on Tuesday that top diplomats from Pakistan and India would meet soon to advance peace talks that have moved fitfully because of political tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals. Sharif was in New Delhi for Monday's inauguration of India's new prime minister, Narendra Modi, with whom he had a "warm and cordial" bilateral meeting, he said. "We agreed that our meeting in New Delhi should be a historic opportunity for both our countries," he told reporters. "This provides us the opportunity of meeting the hopes and aspirations of our peoples that we will succeed in turning a new page in our relations." "We also agreed that the two foreign secretaries would be meeting soon to review and carry forward our bilateral agenda in the spirit of our meeting today." India said earlier that Modi had conveyed during the meeting his concerns about militants using Pakistani soil to carry out acts of terrorism in India. Sharif told reporters that accusations and counter-accusations did not help matters. REUTERS