NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is learnt to have told his ministerial colleagues to expedite implementation of the party’s 2019 vision document for the Lok Sabha elections.
He also asked the newly inducted ministers to closely study the BJP’s 2014 and 2019 manifestos and prioritise steps for their faster implementation from their respective ministries.
In two meetings of the council of ministers held soon after the Cabinet rejig, Modi’s instructions were to focus on deliverables in the 2019 vision document, which was drawn up incorporating crowd-sourced ideas.
Within the BJP, party leaders are particularly looking at three big areas that are yet to be addressed: administrative, police and judicial reforms.
There’s anticipation within the party that Modi may soon embark on the promised administrative reforms.
The 2019 vision document spoke of reforms in the civil services to meet the objective of minimum government, besides merging similar and complementary departments into sectoral ministries.
The document had also promised police reforms by framing a model Police Act in consultation with states.
Modi’s urgency appears to be directed at addressing political challenges in the aftermath of the second Covid wave.
While the BJP can claim to have ticked the nationalism checkboxes in the document like taking out Articles 370 and 35A as also the CAA, there are loads of unfulfilled assurances, like building consensus for simultaneous polls, single voter list across polls, doubling farmers’ income by 2023, completing dedicated railway freight corridor projects by 2022, among others.
Higher educational institutions
The vision document promised to enhance capacities of higher education professional institutions
by 50%, apparently to facilitate the implementa-tion of the 10% EWS quota.