Summary The Indian PM pays obeisance to Mahatma Gandhi by offering flower tributes to his photograph.
NEW DELHI (AFP / Web Desk) - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed office on Tuesday, a day after being sworn-in by President Pranab Mukherjee.
Modi was received at South Block office of the PMO by newly appointed Principal Secretary Nripendra Mishra and some other officials.
As soon as he entered his office, he paid obeisance to Mahatma Gandhi by offering flower tributes to his photograph.
Narendra Modi also held meetings with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
India s Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced his new cabinet on Tuesday, shortly before he was expected to hold landmark talks with his Pakistani counterpart, as he hit the ground running on his first day in office.
The morning after Modi and his slimmed-down team of ministers were sworn in, the right-wing leader was to host Pakistan s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a bid to ease tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
Sharif was one of six regional leaders who attended the lavish inauguration on Monday evening for Modi, a former tea boy who has been elected leader of the world s largest democracy with the strongest mandate for 30 years.
Modi has an image as a hardliner, even within his own Hindu nationalist party, and is regarded with deep suspicion by many in Pakistan after deadly anti-Muslim riots erupted in his western fiefdom a decade ago.
But in a surprise move that disarmed many of his critics, Modi decided last week to invite Sharif to his inauguration and then to join him for bilateral talks on Tuesday.
"Let us together dream of a strong, developed and inclusive India that actively engages with the global community to strengthen the cause of world peace and development," Modi said as he was sworn in on Monday.
It will be the first time an Indian prime minister has hosted a Pakistani leader for official talks in New Delhi since the rupture in relations that followed the 2008 attacks in Mumbai when 166 people were killed.
The talks come as Modi announced his new cabinet on Tuesday, with Sushma Swaraj, the most senior woman in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), named foreign minister.
Arun Jaitley, an urbane top lawyer who has emerged as one of Modi s chief lieutenants, was handed the finance and defence portfolios, while BJP president Rajnath Singh is the new home affairs minister.
Modi himself is in charge of space and nuclear energy along with "personnel, public grievances and pensions".
Modi named 46 ministers including himself -- 25 fewer than in the outgoing government headed by the left-leaning Congress party.
The smaller team is part of a drive to speed up decision-making and slash India s notorious bureaucracy, blamed in part for a slowdown in the economy which is now growing at its lowest rate in a decade.
- Strong mandate -
In an interview to India s NDTV network, Sharif said Modi s arrival in power after a landslide election victory represented a "great opportunity" for the countries to open a new chapter in relations.
"This is a chance to reach out to each other. Both governments have a strong mandate," added Sharif who won Pakistan s election last year.
Sharif promised to pick up the threads of a failed peace process which went on during his second term in office -- coinciding with the last time Modi s BJP was in power in India.
In 1999, then-Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee rode a bus to the Pakistani city of Lahore to sign an accord with Sharif, but three months later the neighbours nearly went to war over Kashmir.
Several television channels reported Modi was likely to chair his first cabinet meeting on Tuesday evening in another signal of his desire to promptly set out clear targets for his government.
In a statement to mark his swearing-in, Modi said his election had handed him a mandate for "development, good governance and stability", avoiding any reference to the Hindu nationalist plank of the BJP s manifesto.
Modi, who rose through the ranks of right-wing Hindu organisations, is tainted by anti-Muslim riots that occurred while he was running his home state of western Gujarat in 2002 that killed at least 1,000 people.
