New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has carried out a marathon 'reboot' exercise but the move has some glimpses of the vintage Moditva phenomenon.
North East India stands to benefit and the move to make West Bengal MP Nisith Pramanik a Junior Minister for Home is aimed at adding to woes for the beleaguered Mamata regime.
Incidentally, PM also gave the new portfolio of Cooperation to his trusted friend Amit Shah.
In the north east 49-year-old Kiren Rijiju from Arunachal Pradesh has emerged as the new-era version of Late P A Sangma, given cabinet rank and allotted the key portfolio of Law and Justice.
Sangma was made Coal and I&B Minister by P V Narasimha Rao and once coalition government was to be formed, Rao made Sangma the first tribal Lok Sabha Speaker.
In Modi's scheme of things, Tripura West MP, Pratima Bhoumik, will be junior minister for Social Justice and Empowerment.
The 52-year-old BJP leader was elected to the Lower House for the first time in 2019. She has become a union minister from Tripura after three decades. Santosh Mohan Dev earlier represented the state - which for long was a communist bastion.
But Late Dev was essentially from neighbouring Silchar in Assam.
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| Lieutenant and his leader |
Rajkumar Ranjan Singh, a first-time MP from Inner Manipur seat, has become MoS for MEA and also Education. New Delhi MP, Meenakshi Lekhi will be MoS for MEA and Culture.
In the reshuffle, Dharmendra Pradhan was moved out from the Petroleum ministry and given the charge of two challenging ministries of Education and Skill Development. BJP's Rajya Sabha MP, Rajeev Chandrashekhar will be MoS Skill Development and IT.
Giant killer and Amethi MP, Smriti Irani lost the Textiles ministry to Piyush Goyal, who will be also the Commerce minister.
LJP leader Pashupati Kumar Paras will be new Minister for Food Processing, the portfolio earlier held by Akali Dal leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal. JD-U leader gets Steel Ministry.
In 2019, Nitish Kumar had declined the offer of a cabinet berth for his party.
Bringing the Lok Janshakti Party and the Janata Dal (United) together is also a significant move politically in the context of Bihar.
The Prime Minister has sought to put his government and the BJP ahead of time by ensuring India's 'youngest council of ministers'.
At a solemn function abiding Covid protocols, the Prime Minister inducted 36 new faces.
As many as 12 ministers including the government's face against Covid pandemic Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad have been dropped. How much Twitter was responsible is a matter of guess !
The exercise reflects Modi's meticulous planning and in the process, the average age of his ministry now stands at 58 - lowest since Independence.
The ministry also has 12 Scheduled Caste, eight tribal and 27 OBC faces and 11 women.
In a major move especially in the context of new challenges thrown up by Covid19 crisis, the Prime Minister allotted the newly created Ministry of Cooperation to Home Minister Amit Shah.
Ensuring pan-India representation, the government now has ministers from Tripura to Tamil Nadu and seven 'performing' ministers of states have been rewarded and given Cabinet rank.
These include Anurag Thakur, who will be now Information and Broadcasting Minister, G Kishan Reddy (Culture and Tourism) and Kiren Rijiju, who will be new Law and Justice Minister replacing Ravi Shankar Prasad.
The new Health Minister will be Mansukh Mandaviya, a lawmaker from Gujarat, known as a workaholic. Among the new faces, Jyotiraditya Scindia has been made the new Civil Aviation Minister and the most creamy assignments came to Ashwini Vaishnaw from Odisha - who has been given Railways and also Communications and IT.
He also worked in the Prime Minister’s Office under Atal Bihari Vajpayee and was appointed as Vajpayee’s private secretary after the NDA’s loss in 2004.
Two other former bureaucrats R K Singh and Hardeep Singh Puri too have been elevated and so is Parshottam Rupala, who will be the new Minister for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying.
Former Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal has been made Minister for Shipping, Waterways and Ayush while ex-Maharashtra CM Narayan Rane has been given the portfolio of Micro Small and Medium Enterprises.
The senior most Lok Sabha MP, Dr Virendra Kumar will be the new Minister for Social Justice replacing Thaawar Chand Gehlot, who now moves to Bengaluru as the new Governor of Karnataka.
Those shown the doors from the council of ministers in what is being seen as merciless surgery are : D.V. Sadananda Gowda,Thaawarchand Gehlot, Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’, Prakash Javadekar, Santosh Kumar Gangwar, Babul Supriyo, Dhotre Sanjay Shamrao, Rattan Lal Kataria, Pratap Chandra Sarangi and Debasree Chaudhuri besides Ravi Shankar Prasad and outgoing Health Minister Harsh Vardhan.
There was social engineering with a difference. While poll-bound UP gets new eight ministers, Gujarat walks away with six.
The new Council also includes 13 lawyers, six doctors, five engineers, seven civil servants, seven PhD holders and three ministers with business degrees.
The new ministers from UP are Kaushal Kishore, SP Baghel, Pankaj Choudhary, BL Verma, Ajay Kumar, Bhanu Pratap Verma, and Anupriya Patel.
Kaushal Kishore, Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma and S P Singh Baghel are from the Scheduled Castes category, while Anupriya Patel (of Apna Dal), Pankaj Chaudhary and B L Verma are from the Other Backward Classes, which make up around 48-50 per cent of voters in the country's largest state.
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Among large states, Narayan Rane, a former Sena CM, Kapil Patil (ex-NCP) and Bharati Pawar and Bhagwat Karad have been included. Rane's role could be used to counter Shiv Sena, who has ditched NDA in November 2019.
West Bengal got four though two earlier faces have been replaced. They all are MoS - Alipurduar’s John Barla (minority affairs), Cooch Behar’s Nisith Pramanik (Home Affairs, youth affairs and sports), Bongaon’s Shantanu Thakur (ports, shipping and waterways) and Bankura MP Subhas Sarkar (Education).
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