Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reconstituted six important Cabinet committees, including the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC), Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) and the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs.
Since the decision of the Prime Minister to >scrap all the Group of Ministers (GoMs) and Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoMs) and the subsequent announcement that >all Cabinet committees will be revamped , there has been a lot of speculation on how exactly he intends to go about the job.
One of the key Cabinet committees, the CCS, is headed by the Prime Minister and has Home Minister Rajnath Singh, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who is also holding additional charge of the Defence Ministry, as members. All the three Ministers are senior BJP leaders. It is evident that once there is a new Defence Minister, the CCS would have five Ministers. The CCS deals with all defence-related issues and those concerning internal security, economy and national security.
Membership While senior Ministers such as Mr. Singh, Mr. Jaitley, Ms. Swaraj, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu and Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari are members of all the committees, Law and Justice, IT and Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has been made a member of three other key Cabinet committees –Political Affairs, Parliamentary Affairs and Economic Affairs.
Allies of the BJP have representation on political, parliamentary and economic affairs committees.
Other key committees are the Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) and the Cabinet Committee on Accommodation. Four Cabinet committees – the ACC, the CCS, the CCEA and the Committee on Political Affairs – are headed by the Prime Minister while the Committee on Parliamentary Affairs and the one on Accommodation are headed by Mr. Rajnath Singh. The BJP’s key allies — the Shiv Sena, Akali Dal and Telugu Desam Party — also find a place in three committees.
The Committee on Political Affairs, also headed by the Prime Minister, has 11 members. These include Mr. Singh, Ms. Swaraj, Mr. Jaitley, Mr. Naidu, Mr. Gadkari and Mr. Prasad. It has also accommodated key allies of the BJP— Food and Consumer Affairs Minister and LJP leader Ram Vilas Paswan, Civil Aviation Minister and TDP leader Ashok Gajapathi Raju Pusapati, Heavy Industries Minister and Shiv Sena leader Anant Geete and Food Processing Industries Minister and Akali Dal member Harsimrat Kaur Badal.
The CCEA, under Mr. Modi, has 10 members, including senior BJP Ministers and two Ministers from allies --- Mr. Pusapati and Ms. Badal. It will also have special invitees, all from the BJP – MoS (independent charge) Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan, MoS (independent charge) Power Piyush Goel and MoS (independent charge) Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman, according to a Cabinet Secretariat notification on Thursday.
The Committee on Parliamentary Affairs has only Mr. Paswan from the allies and three BJP Ministers as special invitees – Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani, MoS Textiles, Parliamentary Affairs Santosh Kumar Gangwar and MoS (Independent charge) Information and Broadcasting, Environment and Forest Prakash Javadekar.
