July '21 Union Cabinet reshuffle

The story: After a long time, a comprehensive cabinet reshuffle of the Modi government took place. Some big names were dropped, and many new names fou

July '21 Union Cabinet reshuffle

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• The story: After a long time, a comprehensive cabinet reshuffle of the Modi government took place. Some big names were dropped, and many new names found an opening. Those who were dropped included Ravi Shankar Prasad (IT minister), Harsh Vardhan (Health minister), Prakash Javdekar (Environment minister), Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank (Education minister) and Santosh Gangwar (Labour minister).
• The 91st Constitutional Amendment, 2003: This amendment added Article 75(1A) that reads "“(1A) The total number of Ministers, including the Prime Minister, in the Council of Ministers shall not exceed fifteen per cent of the total number of members of the House of the People." In this July '21 expansion, PM Modi has taken the strength to 78, just shy of the maximum of 81.
• New opportunities: The country battered by Covid will now look towards Mansukh Mandavia as the new Health Minister (who soon announced a Covid package also), and also towards bureaucrat-turned-politician Ashwini Vaishnaw (the new Railway Minister and IT minister). The government has had a face-off with Twitter.

1. The man who helped BJP come back to power (in the middle of a Covid pandemic) in MP, Jyotiraditya Scindia, was made the Civil Aviation Minister
2. Home Minister Amit Shah was given the charge of the newly-created Ministry of Cooperation (to push the Cooperative movement in India)
3. Piyush Goyal will now be the Minister of Textiles
4. Petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan was given the portfolios of Education Ministry (he'll handle the New Education Policy rollout); he'll also handle the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship
5. Kiren Rijiju (Arunachal Pradesh) was given the portfolio of Law and Justice
6. Hardeep Singh Puri will be the Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas and Housing and Urban Affairs Minister

• The new names: Among the new ministers who were inducted into the Union Cabinet are BJP’s Narayan Rane, Sarbananda Sonowal, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Ajay Bhatt, Bhupender Yadav, Shobha Karandlaje, Sunita Duggal, Meenakshi Lekhi, Bharati Pawar, Shantanu Thakur and Kapil Patil; JD(U)’s RCP Singh, LJP’s Pashupati Paras, and Apna Dal’s Anupriya Patel. Clearly, the Modi government has an eye on the upcoming UP elections 2022, as well as the Lok Sabha elections 2024. The representation of various caste groups has been taken into account.

1. Promoted - The seven ministers of state who were promoted are Anurag Thakur, G Kishan Reddy, Paroshottam Rupala, Kiren Rijiju, Hardeep Singh Puri, Mansukh Mandaviya and Raj Kumar Singh.
2. Lost out - Others who were removed from the Cabinet were Babul Supriyo (West Bengal), Sadananda Gowda, Debasree Chaudhuri, Rattan Lal Kataria, Sanjay Dhotre, Thawarchand Gehlot, Pratap Chandra Sarangi (MoS) and Ashwini Chaubey (MoS).

• The big stories: IT and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad was caught on the wrong foot as the huge row with social media giants like Twitter over the new digital rules drew attention from the international community and gave the government a lot of negative publicity. He also struggled to implement PM Modi's ambitious Bharatnet programme, meant to bring internet to every village, before the June 2021 deadline. The responsibility of resolving the tech jumble has now fallen on Ashwini Vaishnaw, a technocrat with degrees from IIT Kanpur and Wharton School, Pennsylvania University, who with his experience in Public Private Partnership, is expected to fast-track the Bharatnet programme.

1. Mr Mansukh Mandaviya (an MP from Gujarat) had earned praise as the shipping minister, as during the peak of the second wave, he oversaw the import of crucial cryogenic tankers for oxygen imports and was applauded internally for silent crisis management.
2. Mr Nitish Pramanik, a young MP from Bengal, is a vocal critic of CM Mamata Banerjee, and his induction as Amit Shah's junior in the home ministry will have a clear political ramification.

• Summary: For a government that prides itself on "minimum government, maximum governance", this clearly was a change of track. 

 

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