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List of ministries of India

all ministries in Central Government

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ24952557 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Government of India exercises its executive authority through several government ministries or departments of state. A ministry is composed of employed officials, known as civil servants, and is politically accountable through a minister. Most major ministries are headed by a Cabinet Minister, who sits in the Union Council of Ministers, and is typically supported by a team of junior ministers called the Ministers of State. A union minister is also known as a cabinet minister.

Some ministries have subdivisions called departments. For example, the Ministry of Communications has two departments - the Department of Telecommunications and the Department of Posts.

Current Ministries

There are 50 Union ministries and 52 departments in India.

Former ministries

The following ministries once functioned, but have since become defunct, generally because of a merger with another ministry or division into new ministries.

Independent departments

These are independent departments working under the direct supervision of the Prime Minister's Office.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “List of ministries of India” as all ministries in Central Government. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around List, ministries and India.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current 154-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with List, ministries and India providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “List of ministries of India”, the useful work is to connect “all ministries in Central Government” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q24952557. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “List of ministries of India”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow List of ministries of India primary sources, List of ministries of India archive and List research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “List of ministries of India”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “List of ministries of India” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.