Is it the politics or the compulsion of performance which has made the second expansion of the Narendra Modi Cabinet? Primarily aimed at giving importance to representatives from states which are going to polls next year as many as 19 new faces were inducted in the Cabinet expansion on Tuesday. Assembly elections are due in politically crucial Uttar Pradesh and Modi’s home state of Gujarat. With the Modi Cabinet swelled to 78 one of the biggest, but short of the constitutional limit of 82 leaving a margin for future manoeuvering Prime Minister is looking at getting the contentious issues cleared in the coming Monsoon Session of the Parliament, which is slated within a week. The previous UPA Government headed by Manmohan Singh had 77 ministers. This is for the first time ‘Lok Sabha’ has been formed in the Parliament with Dalits getting the maximum representation. In this game of caste vote Uttar Pradesh has 16 ministers, the maximum from any state, in an apparent bid to keep the Dalit and OBC vote bank content. The exercise shows that the BJP is wooing the Dalits who have largely voted for Mayawati’s BSP in UP in the last two decades. Any gains among SCs will help the BJP inch closer to its target of winning 265 of the 403 Assembly seats in the state. Congress dubbed the whole exercise as panic reaction against declining political graph of BJP in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat. The party insisted that with a “top heavy” Cabinet comprising 78 ministers including himself, Modi’s “tall claim” of ‘minimum government, maximum governance’ has been reduced to another gimmick. Congress came down heavily on the Prime Minister, stating an important facet of Cabinet expansion is that the “incompetent and non-performing” ministers have not been punished or dropped nor has any reward been given to the talent. With clear cut caste line being followed in the Cabinet expansion Modi’s claim that development will be the agenda of his party in the UP polls and not caste or religion is an eye wash as its development agenda has been limited to only that of capitalists.
