Smriti Irani, Sadananda Gowda lose positions on Inter-State Council

NEW DELHI: After being omitted from the Cabinet committees earlier this year, Ministers Smriti Irani and D.V. Sadananda Gowda have now also lost their place as permanent invitees to the Inter-State Council, a body headed by the Prime Minister.

In a fresh notification issued on Tuesday, the Prime Minister has re-jigged the composition of the Inter-State Council in which all Chief Ministers are members. There were 11 Union Ministers who were permanent invitees to the Council in the capacity of the portfolios they held. Irani and Gowda, who held the position by virtue of being Ministers of HRD and Law respectively, do not figure in the new list after losing these portfolios in the last Cabinet reshuffle. Irani was moved to the Textiles Ministry while Gowda was moved to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation in the last Cabinet reshuffle. Prakash Javadekar, the new HRD Minister, has now made an entry as a permanent invitee to the Inter-State Council.

Earlier in July, Irani has lost her place as a special invitee to the Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs (CCPA) soon after a Cabinet rejig saw her being moved to Textiles Ministry. Gowda, who used to be part of the committees of parliamentary affairs and economic affairs when he was the law minister, is on none since July.

Last year, Prime Minister Narendra Mo?i had rejigged composition of the Inter-State Council in an effort to make the consultation process more broad-based and enable the government to also consult private domain experts when it came to government policies. Inter-State Coucil then got 11 union ministers as "permanent invitees", six more than the one under the UPA. Now, the Council will have 10 ministers as invitees.