With a hope to get a ministerial post in the Narendra Modi Government, aspirants are camping in New Delhi holding meetings with national president Rajnath Singh and calling on PM-designate Modi in Gujarat Bhawan to bolster their chances.
Though these meetings are called courtesy calls but they have deep-rooted meaning. Indications are that Modi does not want a big Cabinet so he will have six ministers from Uttar Pradesh. Sources claim that Modi wants all of them to be from lok Sabha.
“The BJP parliamentary meeting is on May 20 so all newly-elected MPs are in New Delhi. Yes, some MPs came a bit early and some reached here on Monday,” Bharat Singh, BJP MP from Ballia, told The Pioneer on telephone.
Choosing ministers from UP will be a jig-saw puzzle for Modi. Besides striking a balance on the caste line, the Prime Minister-designate will have to consider the seniority of leaders before picking them for ministerial posts.
The list of aspirants for the ministerial post is long —– from Murli Manohar Joshi to Uma Bharti and from Kalraj Mishra to Shakshi Maharaj, all are aspiring to become ministers in the Cabinet. Then there is Hukum Singh, who was leader of BJP legislature Party in UP. He is also a hopeful. Besides, Gen (Retd) VK Singh is tipped to become the new Defence Minister.
The dalits have shifted base this time in Uttar Pradesh. They had voted for the BJP increasing its vote share from 17 per cent in 2009 to 42 per cent in 2014. Thus, they cannot be ignored during the government formation. Modi will have to accommodate a backward as well.
Indications suggest that Rajnath Singh is likely to be the next Home Minister and Joshi will be the HRD Minister, the post he had held during the Atal regime. Rajnath Singh was Surface Transport Minister in Atal’s time. He had also briefly held the Agriculture ministry in that time.
The state unit of the BJP is highly fragmented. Senior leaders have their groups and these groups create pressure to prop up their leaders. A senior BJP leader told The Pioneer that those groups were back in operation.
“These groups were nowhere to be seen during the elections because Amit Shah called the shot reducing these tall leaders into pygmies. Only because of this, the BJP did well in the elections. Otherwise, there would have been a comedy of errors,” he said. This goes without saying that Amit Shah is also likely to have a say in selecting ministers from Uttar Pradesh. And his pick may get Modi’s nod.