New Delhi: As many as 72 ministers are now part of the Narendra Modi regime – part three.
Even though in the truest sense this is the first National Democratic Alliance government since 2014 – the earlier ones were only notional and the Bharatiya Janata Party did not need other parties’ support to cross the majority mark – Modi has certainly tried to keep things firmly within his control. He has done so by ensuring that 61 of the 72 ministers are from his own BJP, leaving only 11 spots for the allies to peck on.
A close look at the ministers who were sworn in on June 9 also drives home the fact that the BJP under Modi has stuck to what it is particularly known for – its election mode.
States bound for polls between the end of the year and 2026 have been given particular attention. The selection reflects corrective measures, an effort at balancing caste group representation and an effort to continue the BJP’s southward expansion plan.
Look East
An eastern state that finds a sizeable presence in the Modi ministry is Bihar, bound for assembly polls in 2025. The state has been given eight ministerial berths.
Among the six Lok Sabha MPs from the state sworn in yesterday, four belong to the NDA partners Janata Dal (United), Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) and Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular), while two are senior BJP state leaders – Giriraj Singh and Nityanand Rai.
Together with allies, the BJP pocketed a formidable 30 Lok Sabha seats from Bihar in these elections. However, the vote share of the Congress-Rashtriya Janata Dal combine was significant, which means that a state election may not be a bed of roses for the NDA.
No wonder then that a close look at NDA ministers’ names reflects an attempt by the leadership to arrive at a representation balance – through caste groups – with the polls in mind.
While JD (U)’s Rajiv Ranjan Singh’s inclusion is expected to woo the Bhumihar community, the Paswans are to be represented at the Union government by Chirag Paswan of the LJP (Ram Vilas). Then there is Jiten Ram Majhi, the chief of HAM, a leader of the Mushahar community. BJP’s Giriraj Thakur is the Hindutva face of the party in that state while Rai represents the Yadav community, a counter to the Yadav-heavy RJD. Two other ministers are Rajya Sabha members from the state – Satish Chandra Dubey, a prominent Brahmin face of the BJP, and Ram Nath Thakur, son of the state’s celebrated socialist and OBC leader, Karpuri Thakur.
The composition of ministers based on caste and community, aided by a few smart moves by the BJP and its allies in the state in coming months may well put NDA ahead in the game.
Hold on to the Northeast
Assam, a state the BJP depends considerably on to continue its sway over the Northeast, is headed for polls in 2026. While former state chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal was sworn in to serve as a cabinet minister once again in a Modi-led government, the inclusion of the BJP Rajya Sabha MP from the state, Pabitra Margherita, as a minister of state has come as a surprise to many.
The message behind that decision is clear, though. Pabitra has been elevated to thwart the rise of three young and influential opposition leaders from the Ahom community that is key to winning several of eastern/upper Assam’s assembly segments. Pabitra belongs to the same community.
In these general elections, Lurinjyoti Gogoi, former student leader who now heads the anti-CAA Asom Jatiya Parishad, gave a formidable fight to Sonowal from the Dibrugarh Lok Sabha seat.
Lending him support was Akhil Gogoi, the founder president of another anti-CAA party, Raijor Dal. Akhil is an MLA from eastern/upper Assam. The duo also gave their full backing to another Ahom leader, Gaurav Gogoi of Congress, which reflected favourably in the results of the newly-carved out Jorhat Lok Sabha seat in upper Assam. Gaurav Gogoi won that seat by beating a BJP candidate from the Ahom community, which rang the alarm bells among the party’s leadership in the state.
Ahead of 2026, BJP is keen to win back the Ahom votes which had helped it corner both the 2016 and the 2021 state polls. As many as 126 assembly seats of the northeastern state lies in eastern/upper Assam.
It is to be seen, though, if Pabitra’s elevation can do the trick for the BJP, or if he continues to be viewed by the community as a former cultural activist who has risen in the party only by dint of being close to chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. Pabitra is political secretary to Sarma as well.
Keep the West
Even though a peeved Nationalist Congress Party (NCP-Ajit Pawar faction) has refused to accept a minister of state berth, Maharashtra, bound for polls by the end of the year, is another state that has been given sizeable attention in the newly-sworn in ministry. This, despite the BJP and its NDA partners faring not too impressively in these general elections.
Together with allies, the NDA government will have six ministers from Maharashtra – four from the BJP, and one each from Shiv Sena (Shinde) and RPI (Athawale). State MPs Nitin Gadkari and Piyush Goyal will continue to be cabinet ministers from the BJP while two others from the party – Raksha Khadse and Muralidhar Mahal – will be ministers of state.
RPI chief Ramdas Athawale and Pratap Jadhav of the Shiva Sena (Shinde) group have also been sworn in as ministers.
This was seemingly done to ensure that regions and communities are well represented in the Modi ministry before a crucial election where, if the recent poll results are an indication, opposition parties are quite formidable. Congress, after a hiatus, is back in reckoning in that western state.
Also read: From Kairana to Kushinagar, the BJP Lost Popular Support in All Regions of UP
Sew up the North
Though Uttar Pradesh turned out to be the biggest dampner for the BJP in these polls, having lost 28 of the 62 seats it had won in 2019, as many as 11 ministers of the NDA government represent the northern state – all keeping delicate caste equations in mind.
From the BJP stable, there is Modi himself representing the state, along with senior party leader Rajnath Singh. Some others from the party who have found their names in the list are Lok Sabha MPs Jitin Prasad, Kirti Vardhan Singh, Pankaj Chaudhary, Kamlesh Paswan and S.P.S. Baghel, along with the two party Rajya Sabha members from the state – Hardeep Puri and B.L. Verma. Ministers from among the allies are Kanupriya Patel and Jayant Chaudhary.
Going by the fact that the number of ministers is just one less than it was in 2019, one can safely say that the party has not yet lost all hope in its Hindutva hotbed.
From Rajasthan too, where the opposition Congress snatched quite a few seats from the ruling BJP, the Modi-Shah duo has picked four ministers – Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Bhupendra Yadav, Arjun Meghwal and Bhagirath Choudhury. While one belongs to a Dalit community, two belong to OBC communities, and one, to the General category. Choudhury is a first timer in a Union ministry.
This considerable presence of Rajasthan in the ministry despite the BJP’s debacle there, does say that similar to UP, the party is hopeful of gaining lost ground in Rajasthan too.
From Haryana, while inclusion of Manohar Lal Khattar as a minister in the Modi-led government is on expected lines (he was promised a place in the Centre in exchange for stepping down as Haryana chief minister), that of Rao Inderjit Singh and Kishan Pal Gujjar are no big surprises either, considering their caste backgrounds and respective holds.
Along with Maharashtra, Haryana too is bound for elections at the end of the year, and clearly, BJP is no longer in a sweet spot in that northern state. Deciding to hold on to ground it still has some control over appears to be a game the national leadership is ready to play.
However, from the northern belt, what comes as a surprise is the induction of Ravnet Singh Bittu in the Modi ministry. While states like West Bengal seemed to have been overlooked for not electing enough BJP MPs as the party hoped for (ministers from Bengal are fewer than in 2019), a similar loss in Punjab is being looked at differently by the national leadership. Bittu has been accommodated even after losing the polls from Ludhiana.
Bittu’s presence in the NDA government is, therefore, a strong indication that BJP is conscious about having lost large ground in Punjab in the last few years and may now want to send a message to voters that it is not quite as hostile to the majority Sikh community after all. The swearing in of Bitu, a grandson of former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh, can be called the most decisive sew-up effort by the BJP in the North.
Firm up the South
Not one but two ministers in the Modi government are from the Kerala BJP. While one is the Malayalam actor Suresh Gopi who helped BJP reach its dream of having a Lok Sabha MP from the southernmost state by winning the Thrissur seat for the party, the other is a long-time party functionary in the state – George Kurien, a Syrian Christian. While Gopi’s selection is clearly to uphold the party’s hard won victory in Kerala (Gopi became third time lucky after losing the 2019 LS polls and the 2021 state polls on BJP tickets), through Kurien, the BJP wants to send the message to the sizeable Christian population of the state that it wants to take Modi’s recent engagement with religious leaders further ahead of the assembly polls of 2026.
Another poll-bound southern state where the BJP hopes to expand is Tamil Nadu. To be able to dilute the strident opposition of a large swathe of Tamils to its Hindi-Hindu agenda is a particular goal of the BJP’s.
While the party has continued to lose the parliamentary polls in the state, the induction of L. Murugan as a cabinet minister yesterday in spite of him losing in the election is indication enough of its plans.
Murugan, a Rajya Sabha member who had served in the 2019 Modi ministry as a minister of state, is also a Dalit face of the party in Tamil Nadu. The community comprises about 20% of the voters in the state.
Murugan is often given the credit for ensuring BJP’s entry into the Tamil Nadu assembly in 2021 after a gap of several years. The party now needs him as a central minister to ensure that the strategy woven by the current BJP state president Annamalai at home is backed up by implementation of central schemes in that state in order to help in the next assembly polls. Tamil Nadu is going to the polls in 2026.
The composition of the Modi ministry also indicates that BJP is taking measures to better its position in Karnataka, a southern state it lost to the Congress in the last assembly polls. Aside from accommodating former state chief minister and NDA ally H.D. Kumaraswamy in the new central cabinet, Modi has inducted four other faces from the southern state from his party.
Of course, there is Rajya Sabha member Nirmala Sitharaman, five-time MP from the state Prahlad Joshi, along with V. Sumanna and Shobha Karandlaje.
Karandlaje must have been picked keeping the fine balance in mind; she is not only a well known Vokkaliga face but also a woman leader of the state. But what stands out particularly is the inclusion of Sumanna. He is not just an influential Lingayat leader from South Karnataka but is often at loggerheads with former BJP state chief minister B. S. Yediyurappa, another strongman from the community.
The message seems clear. Even while keeping caste equations in mind to arrive at a winning recipe, BJP has decided that the time has come for the ageing faces like Yediyurappa to be shifted to the marg darshan. The qualifying factor for this is the age of 75. This rule that applies to all party men but for one – Narendra Modi.