Prime Minister Narendra Modi,  stung by domestic and international criticism over his government's handling of the pandemic that took more than 400,000 lives and its poor image projection over a number of controversies, dropped his health minister and his deputy in a major cabinet rejig that also saw the sacking of the powerful IT and law minister, the information and environment minister as well as the education minister,  all for purported poor performance.

The top four ministers -  Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar were left untouched.   

Thirty-six new ministers joined the government in what observers said was aimed at a reboot to offset heavy criticism over the poor handling of Covid and the economy. Modi now has 77 ministers, nearly half of them new, up from 52, and a dozen ministers, including some heavyweights, were asked to resign. 

But the exits of  Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, IT and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar and Education Ramesh Pokhriyal stood out on a day the resignations made bigger news than new ministers, said NDTV. The sacking of Harsh Vardhan, a medical doctor, follows months of firefighting as the second surge of Covid engulfed the nation, exposing its inadequate health infrastructure in the rural areas and slow pace of complete vaccination which has barely touched 5 per cent of the country. The opposition Congress said Vardhan was being made a scapegoat for the government's failure whose accountability lay at the top. 

Javadekar was among the chief spokespersons of the government, a role he had performed for years. But Ravi Shankar Prasad's resignation was the most shocking of all, said observers. 
Prasad's last few months in the IT ministry were taken up by an unseemly controversy with Twitter over the implementation of new IT rules.

Government sources the government said "20 per cent" ministers - a fifth of the council of ministers -- had been dropped and the message was performance-linked.

Among new entrants was Jyotiraditya Scindia, once a close friend and confidante of opposition Congress leader Rahul Gandhi who left the party two years ago to join the BJP. 

The political messaging, halfway through Modi's second term, was that mishandlings and controversies were to be left behind and the government, with one of the largest Council of Ministers, was going to present a new face, with better performance across the range of infrastructure areas, a big push in which is needed to revitalise the sagging economy. Hardeep Puri, former diplomat who was India's UN envoy, has been given additional charge of petroleum in addition to urban development and housing, and made a cabinet minister in recognition of his hard work and performance. 

The foreign ministry will now have three junior ministers in what seems a move for a greater push and engagement for India on the world stage, especially at a time when there is projected instability in the neighbourhood with the withdrawal of US forces of Afghanistan and China's continued massing of troops on its border. 

Government sources have termed the reshuffle as an effort by Modi to strike a balance between political messaging of including MPs from various regional centres as well as from marginalised communities and beefing up the skill set of the ministries with professionally and educationally qualified additions. The Hindu said. 

While in terms of balancing competing interests and symbolism, the party seems to have acted decisively, it remains to be seen if this 'change' in faces brings about any real transformation in the government's functioning, The Quint website said in an analysis 
The main problem for the government remains excessive centralisation with the Prime Minister's Office, which is unlikely to change even with the addition of new ministers, it said. Modi, it said,  is unlikely to change his approach of being the only face of the government in terms of taking political mileage but one that is unwilling to take responsibility in public for the shortcomings.(SAM)