Analysis: With Cabinet sub-committee appointments, Modi keeps the politics in his firm grip

Prime Minister Narendra Modi.  

Amit Shah is a member of all the Cabinet sub-committees, including two — on accommodation and parliamentary affairs — that he will head.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reconstituted six Cabinet sub-committees, and formed two new ones to deal with job creation and economic growth. Cabinet committees on their own are not a matter of much interest, unless there is a political point made in who is chosen on which committees — as is the case here.

On Thursday morning, it was made clear that while Defence Minister Rajnath Singh remains number-two in the government according to protocol, the de facto political manager for Prime Minister Modi would be Home Minister Amit Shah.

Mr. Shah is a member of all the Cabinet sub-committees, including two — on accommodation and parliamentary affairs — that he will head. Also, he is one of the two members of the Cabinet committee on appointments, an important one that oversees appointments to major bureaucratic and constitutional posts.

Even more crucial is the fact that Mr. Singh is a member of only two committees — the Cabinet committee on security and on economic affairs. Despite him having been BJP president twice and the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, he has been excluded from the all-important Cabinet committee on political affairs and committee on parliamentary affairs.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman finds herself on most committees, except the Cabinet committee on appointments. While government sources insist that as Home Minister, Mr Shah is entitled to being a member of all of these committees and even heading two, previous governments have demonstrated that this redrawing can be a matter of trust, or expectations of delivery. Thus, while former President Pranab Mukherjee was never the Home Minister, he was always the go-to man for former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh.

It is also, if one looks at the lists closely, an incontrovertible signal from Mr. Modi that the political aspects of the government will be in his own firm grip with Mr Shah’s detailing, and will be conducted with even less of the collegial manner that had been the hallmark of previous governments, including that of the late Atal Behari Vajpayee.