‘When Manmohan was PM, there would be wider discussions.... Modi consults only Shah and RSS’

The Congress had much wider consultations preceding Ministry formations and subsequent reshuffles than the Modi government that has succeeded it. In the last three years, these exercises have been carried out in an atmosphere of total secrecy, with no one even able to speculate on names till they are announced officially.

This has been made possible largely because Prime Minister Narendra Modi only consults BJP president Amit Shah and the RSS leadership and, occasionally, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. The result is the whole exercise is carried out in total secrecy, with names emerging only when they are officially announced.

Hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi reshuffled his Union Council of Ministers, dropping some Ministers, inducting some new faces and shuffling some portfolios on Sunday, Congress general secretary BK Hariprasad told The Hindu: “When Dr. Manmohan Singh was Prime Minister, there would be a discussion with the Core Group which included Sonia Gandhi, Ahmed Patel, A.K. Antony, Pranab Mukherji and P Chidambaram. Dr. Singh would make some choices and Soniaji, as Congress president, would bring the political inputs onto the table. That was how things were done.”

He said now the consultations were not just only among Mr. Modi, Mr. Shah and the RSS, but that they were conducted in great secrecy.

‘No comparison’

Former Union Environment Minister Kishore Chandra Deo too, agreeing with this view, said the functioning of the two governments could simply not be compared.

“There may have been the odd bureaucrat/ government servant in the ministry in our time, but now four have been inducted today — and then there is General V.K. Singh... Bureaucrats don’t necessarily make good politicians: they have a very different mindset.. and the induction of these four substantiates the apprehensions that many people have that everything is controlled by the Prime Minister’s Office. There is bound to be an erosion of political content.”

A senior leader from a party allied to the BJP said, “We were part of the Vajpayee government, too, but there were no real surprises as you see now. The fact that many of the new entrants — especially the bureaucrats — are highly qualified is being made repeatedly. But doesn’t political experience count for anything? Now the pattern is secrecy — followed by a sensational disclosure to make headlines and distract people. There is a difference between politics and scheming.”

However, Nationalist Congress Party’s D.P. Tripathi had a different take. Stressing that it was the Prime Minister’s prerogative to choose his ministerial colleagues, he said the Congress-led UPA was an exception. He also said it was important to note that till the vice-presidential elections were held, there were three former BJP presidents in the Cabinet — Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Surface Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari and former Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu. Mr. Tripathi said this was very rare in democratic parties around the world.