New Delhi: Amid the clamour about a new set of ministers in the central cabinet, it has been gathered that the new council will have a special focus on the marginalised section. This means that the Union cabinet expansion could include a record number of representations of Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribes and OBC categories, as well as an increase in the number of women ministers, a CNN-News18 report stated.
In a move to get younger minds on board, the average age of the Union leaders is also expected to be the lowest in the history since Independent India, the report added.
While cameras follow Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sarbananda Sonowal, Narayan Rane and other prominent leaders who’ve reached Delhi for a possible cabinet seat, the Modi government will focus more on getting ministers from ‘soshit, pidit, vanchhit and adivasi (underprivileged and tribal communities)’.
Indications so far hint that the expansion of the Union Council of Ministers will take place on Wednesday evening. JD(U) leader R C P Singh and LJP’s Pashupati Kumar Paras, both of whom are expected to represent the BJP’s allies in the government, also reached here from Bihar.
Representation of BJP MPs from West Bengal and the Northeast may also go up.
Though there has been no official word on the Cabinet reshuffle, a series of meetings in the government and the BJP have fuelled the speculation that a big shuffling of his council of ministers by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is finally on the cards after he assumed the charge for a second term in 2019.
Modi’s review of the works of his ministers, early next year assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur and Punjab and the COVID-19 pandemic that has been a factor in the internal evaluation of the party’s governance and organisational works are likely to weigh heavy in the expected reshuffle.