PM Modi chairs Council of Ministers meet amid Cabinet reshuffle buzz

Ahead of the Monsoon session of Parliament, prime minister Narendra Modi chaired a meeting of the Council of Ministers. After the meeting, which was held at the recently-inaugurated Convention Centre of the Pragati Maidan, Modi tweeted that he and his colleagues “exchanged views on diverse policy-related issues” during the “fruitful” meeting.

The meeting comes as speculation for a change within the government gathers more prominence ahead of an election year, with the BJP keener to project its achievements in the last nine years.

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A senior party official said that the meeting could be seen as a review of some of the Modi government’s key schemes. “Ministers present on Monday showed achievements in their respective departments,” the leader said.

Sources present in the meeting said that ministers were asked to finish projects before the next Lok Sabha elections, especially of the flagship schemes of the Modi government. PM Modi also advised ministers to spend budgets in their respective departments on welfare programmes for people and ensure pro-poor means of reaching out to people.

Sources said that the Prime Minister also spoke about the success of his US tour. At the meeting, secretaries of four ministries made presentations on work in their ministries. “The PM has asked everybody present to be available to the common man and try to address their grievances. He also said that ministers must ensure all welfare schemes must reach beneficiaries,” a source added.

A strategy for the upcoming Parliament session was chalked out. With Modi advocating the Uniform Civil Code, a clash with Opposition leaders is to be expected. The BJP is likely to bring up Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s meetings during his US visit, which they have termed as “anti-national”.

Modi’s meeting on Monday also follows his marathon deliberations with union home minister Amit Shah and party president JP Nadda last week. Over the weekend, Nadda held review meetings of the party’s various wings as well as with the party’s general secretaries.

With elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram, ahead of the big wrestle in 2024, the BJP has scheduled zone-wise meetings of states in the coming days. As part of a plan called the Micro Booth Management Blueprint, the party has divided all the 543 Lok Sabha seats in three clusters – North, South and East. All the North Indian and Western states are part of the North cluster, while Northeastern states, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal are part of the East cluster. Meetings for the East cluster will take place on July 6, for North on July 7 and South for July 8. Modi’s address to 10 lakh booth workers earlier last week, sources said, was part of the plan.