NEW DELHI/CHENNAI: What started as a murmur about a possible Union Cabinet reshuffle has gathered steam in the national capital, with the power corridors are buzzing with speculations over the leaders who could be ousted and tranferred, and who among the leaders poached from other parties could find a place before the monsoon session of the Parliament in the third week of July.
While everything is still in the realm of rumours, the strongest of them have it that ‘cockroach-hit’ Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan would be dropped or at least moved to another ministry, while another says former RBI governor Shaktikanta Das could come in as the new Finance Minister through the Rajya Sabha route.
In tandem, plans are also afoot to install a new team under BJP president Nitin Nabin. The top brass is believed to have finalised the list, with younger faces expected to be deployed in prominent organisational roles.
Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s future is under a cloud, given a spate of controversies, especially the NEET paper leak and irregularities in the CBSE digital marking system. He is the target of the youth brigade led by the Cockroach Janta Party that has gone on the agitation path seeking his ouster.
The reshuffle is imperative as Union Ministers George Kurian and Ravneet Singh Bittu were not renominated in the recent Rajya Sabha elections, while two others, Pankaj Chaudhary and Harsh Malhotra, have been made the BJP chiefs of Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, respectively. As the BJP follows the 'one man, one post', their positions are also likely to fall vacant.
Several junior ministers could also lose their place due to fall in political utility, and also due to political compulsions to balance the Cabinet based on regional, state, caste and loyalty factors.
Adding an interesting level of intrigue, reports from Maharashtra claim that the Shiv Sena (UBT) members who joined the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena would be accommodated in the Cabinet, a move that is widely interpreted in the Maratha political circles as Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s plan to curtail Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’s clout within the party and India’s richest State.
Similarly, some among the 20 rebel TMC MPs who announced merger with the West Bengal-based Nationalist Citizens Party of India and declared allegiance to the NDA, and the seven Rajya Sabha members who deserted the AAP to join the BJP could find a place in the council of ministers, the sources said.