New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Mody dropped five ministers from his council on Tuesday and expanded it by inducting 19 new faces.
The nature of the expansion and the profile of the new faces show that Narendra Modi has done this exercise with an eye on the upcoming elections in the state of Uttar Pradesh and to implement the party’s agenda of bringing Dalits and backwards closer. Several of the new faces belong to the dalit and OBC categories.
Of the 19 new faces, only two are from parties other than BJP. Modi has also tried to rope in experienced professionals from various fields, like constitutional lawyer P P Chaudhary, well-known cancer surgeon Subhash Ram Rao Bhamre, veteran journalist M J Akbar and agriculture experts Anupriya Patel and Mansukh Mandaviya.
Once again, the cabinet expansion became news because it did not include anyone from Shiv Sena, an ally of BJP.
The induction of new faces and that too dalits and oBCs from UP was done with an aim to wean away the Dalit and OBC vote bank of BSP and Samajwadi Party.
