NEW DELHI: With the government revamping its Cabinet committees by bringing in younger faces after the big-ticket Cabinet reshuffle, one name stood out from the crowd for his meteoric rise. It was of the powerful BJP national general secretary Bhupender Yadav, a key aide of Union home minister Amit Shah.
Though a first-timer in the ministry, Yadav has been made a member of two important panels — Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs (CCPA) and Cabinet Committee on Employment and Skill Development. In his first shot at the ministry during the reshuffle, he straight away got Cabinet rank and is now handling two sensitive portfolios of Environment, Forest Climate Change and Labour and Employment.
Others who have been included in the committees are Smriti Irani, Sarbananda Sonowal, Anurag Thakur and Mansukh Manadaviya. Curiously, the panels have no representatives from allies. The CCPA handles issues related to Centre-state relations and examines economic and political issues that require a wider perspective but have no internal or external security implications.
With the exit of Ravi Shankar Prasad and Harsh Vardhan, the only old-timers left in the CCPA were Nitin Gadkari and Rajnath Singh. The reconstituted CCPA comprises Prime Minister narengra Modi and Union ministers Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Nirmala Sitharaman, Narendra Singh Tomar, Smriti Irani, Piyush Goyal, Pralhad Joshi, Sarbananda Sonowal, Giriraj Singh, Mansukh Mandaviya and Bhupender Yadav.
Union ministers Arjun Munda, Virendra Kumar, Kiren Rijiju and Anurag Thakur have been included in the reshuffled Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs. The revamped Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs comprises Modi, Singh, Shah, Gadkari, Sitharaman, Tomar, S Jaishankar, Goyal and Dharmendra Pradhan.