Team Modi is spending sleepless nights in New Delhi and its not because of the power cuts in the heat, but due to the hard taskmaster that PM Narendra Modi happens to be.

Team Modi is spending sleepless nights in New Delhi and it's not because of the power cuts or the heat, but due to the hard taskmaster that PM Narendra Modi happens to be. A report in The Telegraph points out that "all of them are reeling under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 'punishing regimen' and his expectation that every minister — including the junior ministers — would keep pace with him."

The report points out how Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Minister Ram Vilas Paswan "looks bleary-eyed and edgy all the time." It adds that one middle-level minister, when he asked "a senior minister if he would be allowed a vacation," got no for a reply, while "another middle-rung minister, who was seldom ready for work before 2 pm, according to BJP lore, was heard wondering if his reset internal clock could affect his health."

One BJP insider is quoted by the newspaper as saying that in Vajpayee's time, a strict schedule was followed as well, but they were not held to account on the odd day if they goofed off.

The report adds that the ones who are able to keep up include "Nitin Gadkari, the shipping and surface transport minister who's also handling rural development since Gopinath Munde’s death, M Venkaiah Naidu, the parliamentary affairs and urban development minister, HRD Minister Smriti Irani and Nirmala Sitharaman, who is MoS for,Commerce & Industry as well as Finance and Corporate Affairs (under Finance Ministry)."

The problem is "Modi keeps long days, starting off at 6 am, getting onto the phone an hour later, and ready for work by nine. His day continues till midnight." And when the boss does not sleep, can his team afford to do so?

It's not as if Gadkari has had an easy time switching his body clock around to Modi's. Before Modi, he liked his mornings to be leisurely; but now life has changed.

Another minister who's said to be giving his ministry staff a tough time is Venkaiah Naidu, who handles the Urban Development ministry. The reports notes that one day Naidu turned up at 9am at his Nirman Bhavan office and the place was sparsely populated. He told them to mend ways. Ditto for Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi, who now wants staff to punch the card at 8.30 am and be read for meetings two hours later.

This is not the first report to point out that Modi has been driving his team hard - if not crazy. As Firstpost Political Editor Sanjay Singh had noted in this report, “Mantri toh ab santri ho gaye hain.” (Ministers have become vigil-keepers).

Singh quoted a bureaucrat whose life has changed since the arrival of Modi: "It’s true that almost all the ministers are putting in extra hours at work in office. We have all started to work very hard since the time the Council of Ministers was sworn in. But we are not grudging that. My minister also does not grudge it. After all we all have a point to prove that the government can be made functional and governance is deliverable. Modi-ji himself is a workaholic and expects the members of his ministerial team to match his pace. In this situation one either has to perform or face the axe in due course."

A report in Business Standard had quoted Minister of State for Home Affairs, Kiren Rijiju, as saying that the main problem faced by Modi's staff is that the man himself is up and running at 5.30 am even after working till well after 1 am. Food Processing Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal is also quoted as saying she got a call from Modi at 9 in the morning asking her to meet him in 10 minutes. "I left whatever I was doing and simply rushed because I know the PM doesn't like latecomers," she was quoted as saying.

Modi has also put in place some strict controls for his ministers that show he means his business. As Firstpost writer Rajeev Sharma had pointed out, the PM has issued a strict gag order to all his ministers, saying that they are not authorised to speak to the media on their own. All official announcements on policies will done by the ministry spokesman or the government spokesman.

Additionally, "ministers have also been told that while they are free to appoint their personal staff like Personal Secretaries (PS) and Additional PS, they will have to first get the clearance of the PMO before they appoint these babus," Sharma had pointed out. Ministers have also been asked to not put laal battis on their cars. Further, to avoid sting operations, the PMO has told ministers to ensure that no visitor gets into the minister’s office with his/her personal belongings like mobile phones or cameras or tape recorders.

For Modi's ministers and India's top babus, it's not just about working hard but Modi also expects them to keep with the latest technology. Recently Indian Express reported that the Cabinet Secretariat issued an order saying, "the ministries and departments will, with immediate effect, also make available soft copies of the signed notes for the Cabinet and Cabinet Committees along with all annexures to the Cabinet Secretariat in PDF format in an appropriate Computer Storage Media along with requisite number of copies of the final note." The move is in line with Modi's preference for digitising official records and interaction.

From the numerous reports, Modi's image of being a hard task-master continues in the PMO and his ministers have no choice but to toe the line for now.