Prime Minister's 45-member team has the stamp of Modi himself

Despite their seniority, Modi did not include in his cabinet party elders, LK Advani, 86, and Murli Manohar Joshi, 80, presumably because he wanted to keep the average age of his cabinet relatively young.

Updated on: May 27, 2014, 02:46:28 IST

Hindustan Times | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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Such was the secrecy with which Narendra Modi went about the process of selecting his council of ministers that in the past week even the senior most leaders of his own party had hardly a clue about what was going on in his mind.

In the end, the 45-member team that he announced bore the stamp of one man, Modi himself. Of course, he’d sought the views of a team of leaders—confidantes, Arun Jaitley and Amit Shah, and party president Rajnath Singh, besides taking suggestions from the party’s parent organisation, the RSS — but his final choice reflects his own mind more than anything else.

For the most important cabinet roles, Modi drew on his most experienced colleagues (all from his own party, which has a majority with 282 seats on its own). He is believed to have decided to give finance (and, additionally, defence) to his close colleague Jaitley; home to Rajnath Singh; external affairs to Sushma Swaraj despite the not-so-cordial vibes from her during his campaign; and a beefed-up transport portfolio to Nitin Gadkari.

With Rajnath joining government, Shah is the frontrunner to be the next BJP chief.

Modi has kept his council of ministers young, with the average age at 57; has inducted seven women into his council; and included a number of fresh faces, rewarding some for either decisive wins in the election (former chief of army staff Gen. VK Singh), giving a good fight (Smriti Irani who contested against Rahul Gandhi in Amethi), being a consistent spokesperson throughout his campaign (Nirmala Seetharaman), or managing a successful campaign (Piyush Goyal).

For now, he and his council of ministers number 46, compared to the 71 that the UPA had at the end. The number may go up slightly as tweaks follow over the next few months.

In his choice of ministers, it wasn’t that Modi overruled everyone but neither did he succumb to any pressure. The BJP’s parent organisation, the RSS, is believed to have been in favour of either the home, defence, finance or external affairs portfolio for Gadkari, advice Modi is learnt to have chosen to ignore.

Despite their seniority, Modi did not include in his cabinet party elders, LK Advani, 86, and Murli Manohar Joshi, 80, presumably because he wanted to keep the average age of his cabinet relatively young.

Interestingly, not a single minister in Modi’s cabinet has a dynastic advantage. Two serving and one former chief minister are believed to have wanted their sons to be accommodated in the council of ministers but the prime minister didn’t allow that.

Despite the BJP’s majority on a standalone basis, he did give some jobs to the allies, picking, among others, the Shiv Sena’s Anant Geethe, the Shiromani Akali Dal’s Harsimrat Badal, and the Telugu Desam’s Ashok Gajapati Raju.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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