Narendra Modi sarkar: Bookies betting on names for finance, home, defence, foreign ministers

NEW DELHI: Who will be in the Modi sarkar — the underground betting market is as busy accepting bets on Cabinet berths as the media is busy speculating. And just like hacks, bookies and punters too are interested most in the Big Four — home, finance, defence and external affairs. And journalists and bookies seem to be thinking along the same lines.

Bets are classified according to payoffs — the safer the bet, the lower the payoff. Payoffs are calculated as percentage of a rupee — a 20 paise payoff means that a punter gets Rs 1.20 for every rupee he bets.

ET spoke to a host of big bookies to get the current betting odds. For finance, punters are mostly focused on the two Aruns — Jaitley and Shourie.

A Jaitley bet carries a 20p payoff and is slightly safer than a Shourie bet, which carries a 25p payoff. Jaitley is much betted upon — payoffs on Jaitley bets are 35p for home minister and 25p for commerce minister. Clearly, his having lost in Amritsar has been discounted by betting markets.

But the safest wager is Rajnath Singh for home ministry — you get only 15p payoff for a rupee if you bet on the BJP president moving to this job. The outlier bet for the home minister candidate is on Gen VK Singh. There’s a big 60p payoff. Nitin Gadkari (50p) is slightly less risky.

Abet on Sushma Swaraj as external affairs minister offers a 25p payoff — and is a safer but less lucrative wager than bets on Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar (40p) and Ravishankar Prasad (30p) for the same job.

Real big money is in betting on Gen Singh for defence — there’s a 75p payoff. A bet of a lakh, say, will net you Rs 1.75 lakh if Gen Singh becomes raksha mantri. Betting on Gopinath Munde for defence (50p payoff) is also a high risk/high reward strategy.

Are LK Advani and MM Joshi attracting any bets? Yes, they are. Bookies seem convinced Advani has a good chance to be the Speaker.

They are offering just 15p payoff on such a bet. A bet on Joshi for the same job (45p payoff) is riskier and more rewarding.

As for berths other than the Big Four in a Modi sarkar, Ram Vilas Paswan (5p payoff), Piyush Goyal and Ananth Kumar (both 10p payoff) are considered by bookies to be far likelier candidates than Uma Bharati and Varun Gandhi (both 45p payoff).