PM’s Pack of his 52 Ministers review complete

Focus on Mega pending projects

Modi to get his 2024 War Team soon 

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

Even as the Opposition is grappling to evolve a common strategy to take on the BJP in 2024 Lok Sabha polls, PM Narendra Modi has completed a month-long exercise reviewing the performance of his 52 Union Ministers. The 53rd minister, Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ (Education) could not participate as he was down with Covid.

Highly placed sources in the Prime Minister’s Office told Lokmat the PM split his 52 ministers into 10-sub-groups and meetings were held with each group lasting throughout the day. With some of the groups the meetings spilled over to even for two days.

The free-wheeling discussions took place after each Cabinet Minister made a Power-Point Presentation of the tasks assigned in 2019, targets achieved during two years and likely scenarios by July-August 2023.

The PM reportedly made it clear to all the ministries that each one of them will have to come out with at least two to three projects which could be show-cased before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls to the people. In these free-wheeling discussions, the PM also said that the ministries must complete all the projects by August 2023 as 2024 will be an election year.

For example, the PM is keen that his dream ‘Bullet Train project’ is completed by 2023. Similarly, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar highlighted the preparations for the G-20 Summit which India will be hosting for the first time in 2023. He has been traveling for almost 20 days a month these days.

The review reflected the under-performance of some of the ministries particularly in telecom and education. There is a view that young faces be brought in to develop future leaders. The impending Cabinet reshuffle which is to take place anytime will show-case PM’s War team for 2024 Lok Sabha polls.