Prime Minister Narendra Modi will chair a meeting of the Union Council of Ministers on July 3, officials said on Thursday.
A political crisis involving the ruling All India NR Congress-Bharatiya Janata Party coalition is brewing in the union territory with a section of saffron party MLAs expressing displeasure against the government over issues including corruption, and have knocked on the doors of the national leadership with a plea to set things right before they 'become worse'.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday described the Cabinet reshuffle as a "damp squib" and insisted that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has failed to reassure the nation and dispel the "gloom shadowing the United Progressive Alliance government". "The prime minister's much acclaimed and awaited reshuffle has proven to be a damp squib. It is a futile exercise which inspires none and in no way dispels the gloom shadowing the embattled UPA government," said BJP.
The meeting was held at the newly built convention centre at Pragati Maidan, which will host the G20 summit in September.
The prime minister may go for new faces with an eye on grooming younger leaders while also factoring in caste and regional balances
The reshuffle had politics at its heart, so the biggest complement of new ministers, both Cabinet rank and below, came from UP, which will see assembly elections in a few months.
Punjab cabinet minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal was told he is left with only NRI Affairs portfolio as the administrative reforms department he was holding for the past nearly 21 months did not exist, according to a government notification.
Nirmala Sitharaman's elevation not only to full Cabinet minister but also pitchforking her to the elite Cabinet Committee on Security group with the defence portfolio is undoubtedly the biggest takeaway from Sunday's reshuffle, says Rajeev Sharma.
The Cabinet reshuffle has yielded two unexpected spinoffs - it has altered equations in the second rung of the BJP's leadership and has put ministers under pressure to pursue economic reform in their ministries.
For the past one week, Modi has been holding in-person meetings with Union ministers apparently to take stock of the work done by the government in the last two years and to discuss various issues.
Claiming that Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh did not get a free hand in effecting United Progressive Alliance II first ministerial reshuffle, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday said the exercise has "failed" to show the government's resolve to fight corruption.
The theme of the reshuffle is to fulfill Modi's earlier promise of 'maximum governance, minimum government.' Some key ministries are likely to be merged.
BJP-led NDA gave five seats to the Chirag Paswan-led LJP (Ram Vilas).
In a big organisational rejig, the BJP named Union minister G Kishan Reddy, Sunil Jakhar and Babulal Marandi as party presidents in Telangana, Punjab and Jharkhand respectively.
BJP sources said a meeting of the National Democratic Alliance is expected to take place soon to highlight its growing strength and to dispel the impression that the departure of some of its oldest allies such as the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, Shiromani Akali Dal and the Janata Dal-United have the left the saffron party without a major partner.
The top brass of the Bharatiya Janata Party, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, met in New Delhi on Wednesday.
In her second cabinet reshuffle, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje on Saturday inducted six new ministers including a Dalit woman MLA, elevated two state ministers to Cabinet rank and dropped two state ministers.
Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut said that the party had always given paramount important to the pride of its party and Maharashtra and never sold its self respect for the sake of power.
'The party is breaking stereotypes by not inviting senior leaders to become chief ministers.' 'No other party has had the guts to do this.'
Four Cabinet ministers and 8 ministers of state are to be dropped and the same number of ministers likely to be inducted in Prime Minister Narendra D Modi's council of ministers.
South Haryana hasn't delivered a chief minister since 1967, when his father Rao Birender Singh was ousted from power. It's a legacy Rao Inderjit Singh is determined to reclaim.
Speaking to reporters in Panaji, the BJP's Goa desk in-charge C T Ravi said there was no discontent among the eight MLAs who joined the party earlier this year.
Mansukh Mandaviya replaced Anurag Thakur in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's new cabinet.
Seven TMC MLAs within the Krishnanagar Lok Sabha constituency of party MP Mahua Moitra have written to Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee demanding her removal as Nadia Uttar organisational district president. The lawmakers allege that Moitra has been ignoring Assembly representatives while undertaking party programmes and indulging anti-social elements, causing significant damage to the party's image. The MP has responded by dismissing the complaint as "district-level rubbish."
The BJP leaders said the party wants to bring in new faces in the cabinet and work for the people of the state.
Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Bannerjee is 'almost certain' to enter the Cabinet.
"I do not think the idea of turning India into a 'Hindu Rashtra' is appropriate," Sen, 90, said.
Not only the BJP but key bureaucrats are also known to have hinted to the top leadership of the need to expand the Cabinet.
In order to implement big ticket ideas which are likely to come via the Budget of 2015, Modi needs better political talent around him, says Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com.
The Opposition on Sunday was unimpressed with the rejig, which saw the introduction of nine new faces and the elevation of four ministers to Cabinet rank.
The reshuffle may take place before Modi departs for China to attend the BRICS summit.
The rejig may take place before the assembly election results for Assam, Kerala, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
He said his party was neither expecting nor planning to discuss the expansion
The RSS wants three nominees inducted: Tejaswi Surya, the young BJP MP from Bengaluru South, Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, a Rajya Sabha member, and former Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis.
A Karnataka minister on Monday threatened to commit suicide if he was dropped from the Yeddyurappa ministry even as the chief minister was facing problems in carrying out a cabinet reshuffle with an MLA warning of resignation by 20 legislators.
The already-strained ties between the Bharatiya Janata Party and Shiv Sena further dipped on the eve of the union cabinet reshuffle with the Sena representative unlikely to make an entry at the Centre.
AIADMK coordinator O Panneerselvam is said to be upset at his son Raveendranath Kumar, a Lok Sabha MP, being denied a ministerial chance for a second time in a row, beginning with the formation of Modi 2.0 in 2019, reveals N Sathiya Moorthy.
Narendra Modi will take oath as the prime minister for a third consecutive term on Sunday evening as President Droupadi Murmu has invited him to form the government.
Ministerial expansion: Focus on Purvanchal, Brahmin voters in UP.
Bharatiya Janata Party's National Democratic Alliance partners have got five cabinet ministerial berths in the third term of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as against none in the outgoing government, given the party's dependence on allies for a majority in the Lok Sabha.
