Insiders Reveal How Ministers Were Ruthlessly Assessed For Their New Cabinet Positions

Last Tuesday's Cabinet reshuffle happened out of a Prime Minister-led two-month long assessment process that ranked ministers and ministries, and also a talent selection process that vetted several MPs before picking 19 for induction in the council of ministers.

The detailed research was carried out by a few trusted aides of the PM, both in the government and the party. The PM took the final calls. A top government official also met BJP President Amit Shah for discussions.

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ET has learnt that the PM had communicated to officials that the reshuffle had to be done 10-12 days before the new Parliament season starts and before his visit to African nations.

Persons familiar with this process, who spoke off the record, said every minister and ministry was judged on several criteria.

For ministers the evaluation criteria included, apart from performance metrics, reach-out efforts, temperament, treatment of staff and colleagues, public image, integrity, alignment with government vision and coordination with states.

"Performance, delivery and no outof-turn speaking or creating unnecessary controversies for the government were on top of the PM's mind. He wanted people focussed on work. Minute attention was paid to every appointment," a senior official said about the process.

Among noted high performers were Manoj Sinha, Piyush Goyal, Prakash Javadekar and some others. Officials said Goyal was close to getting a cabinet rank, but the final decision was to put him in charge of all energy-related ministries to use his expertise wisely.

BCCL

The assessment classified some ministers as good leaders, but noted that their portfolios were not best suited to them. This could be the reason Smriti Irani was shifted from human resource development to textiles, Ravishankar Prasad from telecom to law, Birender Singh from rural development to steel, and Venkaiah Naidu from parliamentary affairs to information & broadcasting.

The PM is said to be very satisfied with most infrastructure ministries, an assessment born out of three project reviews in the recent past. It is learnt that among the major ministries judged well were external affairs, road transport, environment, railways, power and finance ministries.

TOI

The PM's team concluded that legal reforms, crucial to the government's larger vision, need to be at a faster pace. The team took the position that ministries such as health and telecom were "diverse and will take time to show results." The rural development ministry, a key ministry for the PM, was judged as requiring more "energy and enterprise."

For selecting new ministers, the first list of 80 MPs was whittled down to 60 and then to 20 while 19 made to the final list. Electoral politics was a consideration, but MPs were also chosen on the basis of their work in their constituencies, performance in Parliament, proactiveness in taking forward the government's schemes and public image. Telecom was a ministry that received very close scrutiny.

TOI

Persons familiar with the PM's thinking said he has always been keen to ensure telecom doesn't attract the kind of controversy it did during the time of Congress-led UPA government. Also, the PM was specifically concerned about the delay in rolling out the nationwide fibre optic network.

Manoj Sinha, whose stint as a junior minister in the railways was seen as ample proof of personal integrity, was picked for telecom. Anil Dave, given charge of environment, was also picked partly for his reputation as an honest politician, besides his understanding of environment conservation.

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Interestingly, the PM had long wanted Dave in his council of ministers. But he could not be accommodated earlier because the council already had sizeable representation from Madhya Pradesh.

Officials said the underlying message of the exercise that went through several reviews was focus on performance of the ministers and putting the ones "who speak out of turn" in their place. The idea was to identify ministers and MPs who believe in working as a team and not look for individual gains, an official said.

BCCL

One of the interesting cases in this exercise was that of minister of state for HRD Ram Shanker Katheria. Katheria resigned from the council of ministers, but did so with the PM's approval and not because he was judged as ineffective.

The MP from UP is considered by BJP as a powerful Dalit leader and it was felt that he was needed much more by the party in the coming state elections. He was consulted after which he resigned from council of ministers. However, another Dalit MP from UP, Krishna Raj, who represents the Shahjahanpur constituency, was inducted into the council of ministers.