Modi expands ministry and rewards ‘performers’

New Delhi: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi expanded his ministry and also rewarded “performers” among junior ministers with Cabinet rank, top among them Nirmala Sitharaman who was named the country’s new defence minister.

The rejig of the council of ministers, which also saw the exit of six members, is being seen as an attempt by Modi to improve the performance of his government as the 2019 general elections near.

The choice of ministers indicates the expansion is an attempt to make the council more representative by including members from various states, castes and communities.

Sitharaman, formerly a junior minister in charge of the commerce ministry, will now be a member of the crucial Cabinet Committee on Security, which takes decisions on national security issues along with Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

India has not had a woman as defence minister since former prime minister Indira Gandhi kept the portfolio for herself.

The appointments to the council of ministers followed the resignation of six ministers, some of who were dropped after a performance review by Modi, said sources from Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

A couple of them were asked to quit as they would be given bigger responsibilities in the party, the sources said.

The new inductees, all of them junior ministers, include retired diplomat Hardeep Singh Puri who was once India’s representative at the United Nations, former Home Ministry top bureaucrat R.K. Singh, former Mumbai police commissioner Satyapal Singh and another bureaucrat and urban renewal expert, KJ Alphons, a Christian from Kerala. — dpa