New Delhi: Ahead of the mega Cabinet expansion, 12 Union ministers were sacked from the Narendra Modi government while 36 new and seven existing ministers took oath at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Wednesday.
Union minister of Health and Family Welfare Harsh Vardhan, Union Education minister Ramesh Pokhriyal, Union Law and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Information and Broadcasting and Environment minister Prakash Javadekar, Union Chemicals and Fertilisers minister DV Sadananda Gowda, Minister of State for Women and Child Development Debasree Chaudhuri, Labour minister Santosh Gangwar, Minister of State for Education Sanjay Dhotre, and Union minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Thawarchand Gehlot are some of the big names.
MoS Jal Shakti Rattan Lal Kataria and MoS MSME Pratap Chandra Sarangi are also among them. Santosh Gangwar, who held the position of Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Labour and Employment resigned from the post hours ahead of the reshuffle. It is believed that the decision of replacing the Labour minister comes after the government was criticised for its sluggish attitude towards employment outcomes and its apathy towards migrant workers.
Citing the tribulations of the migrants during the pandemic crisis, the Supreme Court recently held the Central government responsible terming "the apathy and lackadaisical attitude by the Ministry of Labour and Employment are unpardonable."
The exit of Harsh Vardhan is quite surprising as he was at the forefront of the Modi government's fight against the pandemic.
His resignation from the Health ministry comes at a time when the second wave is underway and a probable third wave is likely to hit the country in September. However, top government sources say that he was not seen as proactive in predicting and managing the ferocious second wave of the pandemic. Even, his deputy Ashwani Choubey has been dropped from the Council of Ministers on account of mismanagement of the second wave. Much of the pandemic management was left to Prime Minister Modi who took severe flak as people died for want of medical oxygen at the height of the second wave in May this year.
Moreover, the government was slammed for presiding over a massive human tragedy as people died due to lack of beds in hospitals, lack of oxygen with bodies being disposed of in the Ganga. Global media and other international platforms slammed the Indian government's inability to handle the infection. Further, insufficient planning, infrastructure, and bodies in rivers dented India's global image with the PMO left to rescue the situation.
Union Minister of Information Technology and Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Union Information and Broadcasting minister Prakash Javadekar were also among the prominent faces who resigned on Wednesday. Prasad had recently been locked in a bitter row with Twitter over new IT rules. Last month, he was even briefly locked out of his Twitter account.
Javadekar, who also held the Environment portfolio, came as a big surprise.
Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, the former Education minister, cited health reasons for his resignation.
Junior minister of the Modi Cabinet Debasree Chaudhuri, who held the portfolio of Minister of State for Women and Child Development, resigned ahead of the reshuffle. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Chaudhuri got elected from the Raiganj constituency in West Bengal in the Lower House. But at the same time, political experts believed that both her poor performance as a minister and her party's pathetic result in Uttar Dinajpur in the recent Assembly elections could be the reason for her removal.
Another minister from West Bengal Babul Supriyo was also sacked from MoS, Environment Ministry. His announcement came hours before a list of 43 new names in the Cabinet was made public.
Further, Union minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Thawarchand Gehlot took over as the Governor of Karnataka on Tuesday. Gehlot on Wednesday tendered his resignation as a member of the Rajya Sabha..