New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will keep in mind the 2019 elections and the performance of ministers while making changes in his Cabinet that is to be reshuffled on Sunday morning.
Sources revealed that the changes in the Cabinet were being made following a “performance” report on ministers, submitted to the Prime Minister by BJP president Amit Shah.
It will be the third such exercise since Modi took over as Prime Minister in May 2014.
Shah met Modi on Thursday and the two leaders are believed to have finalised the changes in the Cabinet.
Modi could bring in new faces to take charge of the additional portfolios being held by finance minister Arun Jaitley, textiles minister Smriti Irani, rural development minister Narendra Singh Tomar and science and technology minister Dr Harsh Vardhan.
Jaitley is likely to hold on to the finance portfolio, handing over the defence portfolio to a new minister, but it remains to be seen whether the Prime Minister retains Ms Irani in the high-profile I&B ministry and brings in a new face for the textiles ministry.
Minister of state for civil aviation Jayant Sinha may also get a Cabinet rank.
Some of the fresh saffron faces that could enter Modi’s Cabinet are Ram Madhav, Muralidhar Rao and Vinay Saharshabuddhe.
The names of party MPs, including Prahlad Patel, Suresh Angadi, Satyapal Singh and Prahlad Joshi, are also doing the rounds for getting a berth in the Modi government. Speculation is rife that from the JD(U) RCP Singh and Santosh Kumar could join the Cabinet.
The AIADMK is unlikely to join the Cabinet at this juncture. Ahead of the rejig, five ministers — Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Sanjeev Kumar Bal-yan, Faggan Singh Kulaste, Mahendra Nath Pandey and Bandaru Dattatreya — have already resigned while two Cabinet ministers, Uma Bharti and Kalraj Mishra, have offered to resign.
Asked about her resignation, Bharti said only party president Shah or someone on his behalf “could answer that question.”
She later tweeted, “I was asked to give my reaction to the news of my resignation, that the media has been playing up since last evening... I replied that I have not heard this question, nor will I give an answer for it.”
While Bharti’s camp had been saying that the minister had sometime back offered to resign on health grounds, sources in the BJP said that the saffron sanyasin “is not keen to give up her ministerial berth”. It was learnt that the party high command was “not too happy with her performance” on the Ganga rejuvenation, a pet project of the Prime Minister. “
A process has been set in motion for the swearing-in ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan at around 10 am on Sunday,” a top government official said.
