PM Modi to chair meeting of Council of Ministers on July 3

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called a meeting of the union Council of Ministers next week after late-night deliberations with top BJP leaders on Wednesday amidst buzz over an impending churn in the ruling dispensation -- both in the party and the government.

The meeting at the prime minister’s residence was attended by BJP president J P Nadda, Home Minister Amit Shah, and BJP General Secretary in charge of the organization B L Santosh attended the meetings at Prime Minister’s residence in Delhi.

The last major cabinet reshuffle undertaken by the PM was in July 2021 when about a dozen ministers were dropped and 17 new faces were inducted.

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While Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for a meeting of the Council of Ministers on Monday, BJP president J P Nadda, too, would be interacting with party general secretaries as well as section heads in the coming days, in addition to holding state-wise meetings. Within the BJP, too, several meetings are slated for the next few days.

On Saturday, Nadda has called for meetings with general secretaries as well as presidents and joint secretaries of the party’s various morchas. Following that, on July 4-5 he is holding review meetings with parliamentarians of the party’s month-long outreach campaign for the nine years of the Modi government.

Significantly, the party has a slew of meetings of clusters of states with the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in mind. 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 this week, sources said, was part of the plan.

Along with the sustained buzz of a churn in the government, there are ample indications that the BJP is looking to spruce up in poll-bound states and the Lok Sabha elections next year.

For instance, in Karnataka, after a month following a comprehensive loss, the party is yet to declare a leader of Opposition, and there is uncertainty whether Nalin Kateel will continue, even as the infighting within leaders is out in the open.

In poll-bound Telangana, too, differences have cropped up and three of the state’s key leaders – Bandi Sanjay, Rajender Eatala and G Kishan Reddy – have met the party leadership recently. As the party plans to have a thrust on backward classes, the role of Eatala Rajendra, who joined the party from Bhartiya Rashtra Samithi last year, assumes importance. The question is whether Bandi Sanjay will continue as the state chief or will the party look for alternatives.

Similarly, in Rajasthan, as infighting grows louder, it remains to be seen what role the party allocates to its veteran leader Vasundhara Raje.

BJP will also have to accommodate its new allies, the Shiv Sena Shinde faction in Maharashtra and Jiten Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha and Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Samta Party in Bihar, in case of a cabinet reshuffle.