NEW DELHI: Having installed two compatriots as the President and the Vice-President of India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s focus would now shift to cabinet expansion and reshuffle with a clear vision for 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
According to sources, the exercise could also mark some major organisational changes too as the party is more than keen to target winning maximum Lok Sabha seats from amongst 189 parliamentary constituencies in eastern and southern India.
An indication to this came clearly with the change of guard at the NITI Aayog even as the ouster of outgoing Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya being attributed to his going back to the academics.
Many in the BJP saw a lackluster performance in Mr Panagariya’s stint and now he has been replaced by Rajiv Kumar, an economist, who was once Secretary General of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).
Unlike Mr Panagariya, who was from a purely academic background, Mr Kumar has worked with the government machinery in the past as he was a member of the Government of India’s National Security Advisory Board between 2006 and 2008 during UPA regime.
The Prime Minister’s cabinet expansion expected sooner than later has been necessitated by the vacant slots in the team as the then Defence Minister Manohor Parrikar had to be shifted to Goa, Information and Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu now moves as the new Vice-President and former Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave unfortunately expired.
Moreover, BJP chief Amit Shah and PM Modi would also like to focus on southern states as this will be the ground zero besides West Bengal, Odisha and northeast from where the saffron outfit would expect to pick up as many seats as possible.
“We have reaped the benefits of working in our strongholds in 2014….now it is time to look at states and region which have beeninfertile for BJP in terms of seats even as party’s acceptability had started long back in these states,” a key party leader said. Out of these states — it makes a substantial number of 189 seats in the Lower House of Parliament.
Therefore, even the Cabinet expansion could be surprising and would possibly try to attract attention of the states like Telangana (which has 17 Lok Sabha seats), Odisha (21), West Bengal (42), Tamil Nadu (39), Andhra Pradesh (25), Kerala (20) and seven north eastern states (25).
Armed with near lethal political acumen and confidence, Prime Minister Modi has already set his agenda beyond 2019 and has embarked on a five-year long road map up to 2022.
Speaking at the meeting of NDA MPs ahead of the voting in the election for the Office of Vice-President of India, Mr Modi has said the “next five years” will be crucial for the country and noted that it is also significant that the country will have President and Vice-President from the BJP-led NDA during 2017-22.
In fact, the BJP and the RSS camp is more than jubilant as for the first time in country’s history — four top posts President (Ram Nath Kovind), Vice President (M Venkaiah Naidu), Prime Minister (Modi) and Lok Sabha Speaker (Sumitra Mahajan) – all hail from the Sangh and the Hindutva school of thought.
The party sources said that the BJP’s aggressive campaign to win over Nitish Kumar-led JD(U) in Bihar and Congress legislators in Gujarat were more guided by compulsion as the party may face a shortfall of 50-60 seats out of its 281 present tally in the Lok Sabha.
As part of electoral strategy, the BJP has directed some of its Rajya Sabha members including Union Ministers to “cultivate” parliamentary seats.
A few Union Ministers like Dharmedra Pradhan from Odisha, Prakash Javdekar from Maharashtra and Nirmala Sitharaman may be asked to contest Lok Sabha polls.
Among the seats won in 2014, the party is also planning trying out new faces in several of these parliamentary constituencies. In 2014, the BJP had won 73 (with ally) out of 80 seats in UP, 27 of Madhya Pradesh’s 29 Lok Sabha seats, 10 out of 11 in Chhattisgarh, and all of 25 seats in Rajasthan and 26 in Rajasthan.
A few film stars could also be fielded in states like West Bengal, Gujarat, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh, sources said. (AGENCIES)
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