Non-BJP ministers in Narendra Modi government more involved in Cabinet meetings

NEW DELHI: The Congress-led UPA may have been troubled by its regional allies with ministers refusing to come to Delhi, but the Modi government is facing no such problems.

Cabinet records accessed by ET reveal non-BJP ministers are more involved in decision-making and regularly attend Cabinet meetings.

Civil aviation minister and TDP MP AG Raju has attended the most number of meetings (80 out of 84) from May 2014 till February 2016. Social justice minister TC Gehlot is a close second (78 out of 84), followed by law minister DV Sadananda Gowda (76). The ministers hailing from regional parties fare even better than their BJP counterparts.


Jagat Prakash Nadda, Manohar Parrikar, Suresh Prabhu, Chaudhary Birender Singh joined the Cabinet in November 2014.

ET accessed Cabinet meeting records from May 2014 till February 2016 under the RTI Act and found three of the four ministers hailing from BJP’s regional allies in the top 10 in terms of their attendance.

Food minister Ram Vilas Paswan (LJP) is at number eight, Harsimrat Kaur Badal (SAD) is at number nine and heavy industries minister Anant Geete ( Shiv Sena) is at number 11.

The worst attendees are health minister JP Nadda, defence minister Manohar Parrikar and rural development minister Birender Singh.

In the first seven months of the government, women ministers had outdone their male counterparts, with HRD minister Smriti Irani and water resources minister Uma Bharati not missing a single Cabinet meeting.

But after 20 months in power, the women ministers have slipped with Irani at the fourth position. A similar study conducted on UPA-II revealed even the minister attending the most number of meetings had 89.6% attendance.

The worst attendees scored as poor as 22%. Modi’s ministers’ attendance ranges from 51.19% to 95.24%. Of the 13 ministers of state with independent charge, power minister Piyush Goyal has attended the most meetings (21) followed by Nirmala Sitharaman (12), Jitendra Singh (10) and Mahesh Sharma (9).