New Delhi, May 30 (IANS): Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha has been dropped from the Modi 2.0 Cabinet.

The former Minister had lost the Ghazipur Lok Sabha seat to BSP's Afzal Ansari. Sinha got 4.46 lakh votes as compared to Ansari who received 5.66 lakh votes.

Sinha had taken charge of the high-profile Telecom portfolio from Ravi Shankar Prasad in 2016.

There were reports that the Prime Minister's Office was unhappy with the Minister of State for being unable to successfully complete Modi's pet digital Indian project of BharatNet which was to connect 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats.

Also during his tenure hyper competition got to the throat of the industry and the sector bled with losses with very cheap tariffs. During his tenure the spectrum auction of 2016, the government could manage only Rs 65,000 crore when spectrum worth Rs 4 lakh crore was on the block. The next two years, there were no auction of spectrum.

The conditions of two PSUs -- BSNL and MTNL -- under the Telecom Ministry deteriorated.