70 years new red line in BJP; Modi Cabinet rejig spotlight on Maharashtra, Bihar
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, February 16: The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is now seen pushing party leaders out of Parliament after their touch 70 years of age. Shiv Pratap Shukla, who retired from the Rajya Sabha in July last year, is now a Governor, pushed out of active politics after he turned 70 years old.
The BJP circle is now counting the age of the serving ministers and the Rajya Sdabha MPs, who are either breaching the new threshold of 70 years or have breached. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is widely being speculated to carry out rejig in the council of ministers. While the BJP has maintained in the past that 75 years would be the age ceiling for electoral politics, the saffron outfit has broken this unofficial bar to suit political compulsions.
Modi and the Union Minister for Defence Rajnath Singh lead the list of ministers who are past 70 years of age in the Council of Ministers. But the rule of exceptions clearly apply on the two top leaders of the BJP.
Ministers who are past 70 years of age are Ashwini Choube, Hardeep Singh Puri, V K Singh, Som Prakash, Rajkumar Ranjan Singh, Giriraj Singh and Rao Inderjeet Singh. Parshottam Rupala is also approaching the age red line. The Lok Sabha elections in 2024 may see such ministers who have breached the 70 years age bar denied party tickets, paving pay for their retirement from active politics. Some of them may be adjusted for gubernatorial responsibilities, but most could be sitting out on the sidelines.
The electoral compulsions may drive rejig in the council of ministers. The incumbent BJP is seen to have task cut out in Bihar and Maharashtra. In Bihar, the BJP will square off against a rejuvenated social justice ‘Mahagathbandhan’ of the Janata Dal (United), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Congress. The BJP could be seen drafting in a combination of the other backward caste (OBC), extremely backward caste (EBC) leaders to build on the base to counter the ‘Mahagathbandhan’.
Bihar has a total of 40 Lok Sabha seats, and the state was instrumental in the BJP’s overall kitty of 303 seats in the Lok Sabha in the 2019 general elections. By all accounts of the BJP leaders, the Lok Jan Shakti Party (LJP) leader Chirag Paswan is likely to make into the council of ministers.
In Maharashtra, the BJP has to bring in the Shiv Sena of the Eknath Shinde faction in the council of ministers to brace up for the general elections in the state next year, while also giving a semblance of the ruling NDA boasting of allies in the government at the Centre.
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