- Sunday, February 23, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
SPECULATION is rife over a possible cabinet reshuffle in the Narendra Modi government and if it happens, as many as 27 probables, including some heavyweights, could be a part of a massive exercise.
Among the probable names that are likely to feature in the cabinet are former Congress heavyweight from Madhya Pradesh Jyotiraditya Scindia who joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) last year; former Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi; BJP national general secretaries Bhupender Yadav from Rajasthan and Kailash Vijaybargiya from Madhya Pradesh, who was recently in charge of the saffron party’s election campaign in West Bengal. Party spokesperson and minority face Syed Zafar Islam is also tipped to bag a central government role.
Former Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal and former Maharashtra chief minister Narayan Rane are also on the list. Besides, Pritam Munde, Lok Sabha member from Beed, Maharashtra, and daughter of late Gopinath Munde could also make the cut.
BJP sets eye on UP before big battle of 2022
The BJP also has an eye on a number of leaders from Uttar Pradesh, the key state which goes to elections next year before the big battle of 2024. The party’s state chief Swatantra Dev Singh is considered to be a certainty in a new role while Maharajganj Lok Sabha representative Pankaj Chaudhary and Pilibhit Lok Sabha member Varun Gandhi are also among the probables. Anupriya Patel, leader of BJP ally Apna Dal and a former Union minister, is also in the list.
Rajya Sabha member Anil Jain, Odisha members of Parliament Ashwini Vaishnaw, Baijayant Pandey and former railway minister Dinesh Trivedi, who recently left the Trinamool Congress to join the BJP, are also in the race.
New Delhi Lok Sabha member Meenakshi Lekhi is likely to be the only entrant from the national capital.
The reshuffle, which will be the first in Modi’s second term that started in 2019, is necessitated by untimely deaths of leaders such as Ram Vilas Paswan and Suresh Angadi and exits of old alliance partners like Shiv Sena and Akali Dal.
