Rajnath Number Two In Govt, But On Just Two Cabinet Committees

New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah is in all eight key cabinet committees announced after Prime Minister Narendra Modi started a second term last week, while defence minister Rajnath Singh is in just two, reports NDTV.

Prime Minister Modi is in six of them, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in seven and Commerce and Railways Minister Piyush Goyal in five.

Rajnath Singh is in the Cabinet Committees on Economic Affairs and Security. He is notably missing from the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs, which decides on policy; it has Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Nirmala Sitharaman, Narendra Tomar, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Harsh Vardhan, Piyush Goyal, Pralhad Joshi and allies Ram Vilas Paswan, Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Arvind Sawant.

Rajnath Singh’s exclusion is significant because the minister who is number two in the government – by convention the person who is sworn in right after the prime minister – usually presides over the cabinet and the political affairs committee in the absence of the Prime Minister.

Also, Nirmala Sitharaman as Defence Minister was part of the previous government’s political affairs committee.