Cabinet reshuffle: PM Narendra Modi highlights experience of new colleagues

NEW DELHI: Before his team took oath, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told his ministers at a morning meeting that the earlier exercises were dissected as ‘caste balancing acts’ and after the third reshuffle there could be talk about the government being ‘filled with babus’. A senior minister present in the meeting told ET: “The prime minister addressed the points even before they were raised. He introduced each of our new colleagues and spoke extensively about their administrative and political experience.”

The PM explained how the former bureaucrats inducted on Sunday had strong political credentials and acumen than they were credited for. Introducing all the new ministers, Modi told the party seniors their qualifications and even personal equations.

The third reshuffle in as many years has seen nine new faces including four bureaucrats — former bureaucrat KJ Alphons (minister of state independent charge tourism), career diplomat Hardeep Singh Puri (minister of state independent charge housing and urban affairs), former home secretary RK Singh (minister of state independent charge of power) and former Mumbai police commissioner Satya Pal Singh (minister of state for human resource development).

He introduced Alphons and said he was an LDF MLA in Kerala before he joined BJP. “The party and the government can draw from his experience,” Modi reportedly said adding that since these men have been within the system they know how to get work done.

Another minister told ET that Modi recalled Puri’s experience in student politics and his participation in the JP movement to brush aside any doubts in his ministers’ minds about lack of experience or expertise of the new entrants.

A senior official said “the prime minister was well aware of the exercise being dissected from all possible angles. So he dispelled all doubts”. Modi brought into focus RK Singh’s vociferous speeches in Parliament and Satya Pal Singh’s experience in anti-Naxalite operations at the meeting. The meeting ended with a crisp directive to get cracking as the countdown for a second mandate had begun.