Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to rejig his ministry, dropping “non-performers” and inducting new faces, as he prepares for a slew of Assembly elections this year and the Lok Sabha polls in 2024, sources said.
The Modi dispensation is known for effecting shock-and-awe changes to drive the optics of an engaged government and try to nullify anti-incumbency. Internally, such exercises are meant also to reinforce the leadership’s dominance and send out the message that none in the party should consider themselves indispensable.
Hectic meetings have been taking place at party and government level to finalise the changes, leaving many ministers nervous, sources said.
The changes are expected after the January 16-17 meeting of the BJP’s national executive and before the budget session of Parliament, which begins towards the end of January.
Party leaders said that changes were likely also in the BJP organisation. “People from the government could be moved to the party to do organisational work and new faces inducted in the government,” a party leader, who is eyeing a ministerial berth, said.
Party president J.P. Nadda’s term expires later this month but he appears likely to get an extension till the Lok Sabha polls.
While the power corridors are agog, no one seems to have any clear ideas about the possible changes. “Only one man (Modi) knows who is in and who is out,” a former minister said.
This former minister had been among a dozen heavyweights who were dropped at one go during the last cabinet shuffle in July 2021. The memory of that bloodbath is keeping many ministers on tenterhooks
“The changes are likely to be significant, given the scale of the meetings that are taking place,” a leader said, adding that the rejig would be commensurate with the magnitude of the target — a third consecutive term for Modi.
“You saw how a total overhaul of the government in Gujarat contributed to a record-breaking victory in the state recently,” a party manager said, hinting at widespread changes.
Government managers indicated that the Prime Minister could bring new faces into key ministries like finance and those dealing with infrastructure.
With the government troubled by an economic slowdown, job crisis and inflation, the appointment of a new finance minister to instill hope cannot be ruled out, sources said.
The changes to the council of ministers are likely to be made with an eye on the upcoming state elections, with “key leaders from the pollbound states inducted”, an insider said.
Sources said that getting the caste equations right and balancing factionalism in the state units would play a crucial part in selecting the new entrants.
With polls due in Rajasthan this year, there’s speculation that Rajasthan MP Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore might be reinducted into the government.
Rathore had been a minister in the first Modi government. Nine states are to go to the polls in 2023: Karnataka, Telengana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and the northeastern states of Tripura, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Mizoram.