It could be this weekend?
No news with Rashtrapati Bhawan so far
by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
With the month-long exercise of performance of 22 Cabinet Ministers and nine Ministers of State (Independent Charge) over yesterday, speculations intensified in the Cabinet of a major over-haul and expansion of the 54-member Council of Ministers.
The PM had already held consultations with the top leadership of the party, RSS and many chief ministers of the states including Shivraj Singh Chouhan. It is also stated that the PM also explored the possibility of bridging differences with the Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is now ready that Janata Dal (U) joins the party. JDU leaders Lallan Singh, Ramnath Thakur and Santosh Kushwaha are reportedly in the running. The Apna Dal of UP is also set to re-join the council with Anupriya Patel in it. Both the factions of the LJP will be kept out.
A couple of Ministers with Independent Charge may be promoted to the Cabinet too.
Jyotiraditya Scindia (Madhya Pradesh) Sarbananda Sonowal (Assam), Dilip Ghose (West Bengal), Sushil Modi (Bihar), Bhupendra Yadav (Rajasthan), Varun Gandhi (UP), Zafar Islam (UP) Ajay Bhatt or Anil Baluni (Uttarakhand) and a few from poll-bound states may be brought in.
The focus will be inducting some young faces keeping long-term interests of the party. There may be at least six new young faces. The names of Rahul Kaswan (Rajasthan), Ashwani Vaishnav (Odisha), Poonam Mahajan or Pritam Munde (Maharashtra) and Parvesh Varma or Meenakshi Lekhi (Delhi) are doing the rounds.
At least three ministers may be dropped while the portfolios of nine ministers holding many additional charges may be taken away. Will a Chief Minister be brought to Delhi, no one has a clue. Nine ministers with additional charge may shed extra ministries - Prakash Javadekar, Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan, Nitin Gadkari, Harsh Vardhan, Narendra Singh Tomar, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Smriti Irani and Hardeep Singh Puri.
