New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to induct about a dozen new faces in his Council of Ministers and re-allocate some important portfolios tomorrow, probably the last major revamp of his team ahead of the 2019 general elections.
The new Ministers will be sworn-in by President Ram Nath Kovind at a ceremony in the Rastrapathi Bhawan, which will start at 10 am. The Prime Minister will leave for China to attend the BRICS Summit Sunday afternoon.
Among the names doing the rounds in BJP circles as likely contenders for Ministerial posts were Vinay Sahasrabuddhe from Maharashtra, former Mumbai Police Commissioner Satyapal Singh, Harish Dwivedi from Uttar Pradesh, Prahlad Joshi, Suresh Angadi and Shobha Karandlaje from Karnataka, Prabhat Jha, Rakesh Singh and Prahlad Patel from Madhya Pradesh, Ashwini Choubey from Bihar and Mahesh Giri from Delhi.
In revamping his team, Modi is expected to strike a balance between his agenda of governance and political expediency. He might give representation to about half-a-dozen States going to polls by the end of 2018 and reflecting the ruling party’s new social engineering formula. BJP sources said he is likely to put a premium on performance in the re-allocation of portfolios, as was the hint from the list of Ministers who were asked to put in their papers.
Of the 73 members of the Union Council of Ministers, at least eight are likely to be edged out. There can be a maximum of 81 members, which gives the Prime Minister the option of inducting at least 15 new faces in the Government. He is, however, unlikely to fill up all vacancies.
This post was published on September 2, 2017 6:52 pm