Janjivan Bureau / New Delhi : Narendra Modi government is all set for an expansion and a Cabinet reshuffle on Sunday 10 AM. PM already took the resignation of half dozen minister of his cabinet. It is expected the son of former Lok Sabha Speaker P A Sangma will inducted in the new cabinet as per Manipur assembly tie up agreement. The new team will also have at least two members from the BJP’s new partner, the Janata Dal United of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar – Ram Chandra Prasad Singh and Santosh Kushwaha are tipped to be ministers.
Three union ministers resigned late on Thursday night to make way for new faces and, sources said, several more are likely to quit today. The mega exercise is expected to fill key cabinet vacancies and also bring into the council of ministers, leaders from states where elections will be held soon.
Bhupendra Yadav, who is the BJP’s man in-charge of Gujarat, is among those likely to be made a minister. BJP chief Amit Shah has set a target of winning 150 of the 182 seats in assembly elections due in the state by the end of the year and an A-list central team led by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will shape election strategy.
Apart from the key role he plays, Bhupendra Yadav is also from Rajasthan, where elections will be held next year.
Bhupendra Yadav, who is the BJP’s man in-charge of Gujarat, is among those likely to be made a minister.
The BJP’s Suresh Angadi and Prahlad Joshi could be inducted as ministers. Both are from Karnataka, where the BJP hopes to oust the Congress next year to regain the only state in the south it has ruled.
Prahlad Singh Patel, who is from Madhya Pradesh, another state where elections will be held next year, could also be made a minister. Mr Patel has been a minister before in the government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
The name of BJP Rajya Sabha member from Maharashtra Vinay Sahasrabuddhe who is a party idealogue is doing the rounds as a possible new minister. As is that of Satyapal Singh, former police commissioner of Mumbai who defeated Uttar Pradesh politician Ajit Singh in his bastion Baghpat in the 2014 national election.
According to four party sources, Sanjeev Balyan, minister of state for water resources, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, minister of state for skill development and entrepreneurship, Kalraj Mishra, minister of micro, small and medium enterprises, and Mahendra Nath Pandey minister of state for human resource development have all offered to resign.
Union minister Mahendra Nath Pandey’s appointment as Uttar Pradesh BJP president, in place of deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, has kicked-off a re-configuring of the caste calculus ahead of the general election.
The seasoned BJP leader, one of the better known Brahmin faces of the party in the state, had served as a minister in previous BJP governments in Uttar Pradesh. Shah’s decision to put Pandey in charge of the state unit appears to be aimed at consolidating the party’s hold over the state’s sizeable Brahmin population.
With caste being a key political factor in the state where the party opted for a Thakur in Yogi Adityanath as chief minister, Pandey’s choice is likely an exercise that seeks to keep the caste equation stable.
His predecessor Maurya came from the OBC community and was made one of the two deputy chief ministers in the state government.
With links to RSS going back to his student days, Pandey is being seen as the ideal candidate who will help consolidate the Brahmin vote bank ahead of the 2019 General Elections. He was also the general secretary of the students’ union at the Banaras Hindu University.
The death of Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave and the election of Minister for Urban Development M. Venkaiah Naidu as vice-president opened vacancies, giving Modi an opportunity to bring in members from regional political parties.
It may be a sheer coincidence. Soon after effecting cabinet reshuffle, Prime Minister Narendra Modi leaves on a foreign trip. It has happened on the last two occasions in the past and it is likely to happen for the third time.
PM Modi carried out the first cabinet reshuffle on November 9, 2014 inducting 21 new ministers. On November 11 morning, he embarked on a 10-day tour of Myanmar, Australia and Fiji, in the same order. It was his sixth foreign visit after becoming PM.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi undertook the second cabinet reshuffle on July 5, 2016. At 15 minutes past midnight on July 7, he left on a four-nation tour of the African continent. With his first stop in Mozambique, he also visited South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya. It was his 24th foreign trip.
The PM is likely to effect reshuffle of his council of ministers for the third time on Saturday September 2 evening. He will be leaving shortly for a three-day visit to China and Myanmar between September 3 and 5 in his 33rd trip abroad.
Coincidentally, Myanmar was the first country that Modi had visited after carrying out his first reshuffle. He may undertake several foreign trips in the remaining 20-odd months of his tenure. The Saturday reshuffle may likely to be the last one till 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Hence, Myanmar will likely be the last country he may visit in a trip after effecting a reshuffle.
Modi’s last foreign visit was between July 4 and 8 to Israel and Germany.
Some would believe that PM Modi leaving for a trip abroad soon after his first reshuffle may have been a coincidence and the second one may have been an aberration but the third one may prove that it is a pattern.
