Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a meeting at his official residence, 7, Lok Kalyan Marg, in New Delhi on Sunday evening over government formation in Uttar Pradesh, Goa and Uttarakhand. Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, party national general secretary (organisation) BL Santosh and national president JP Nadda were present at the meeting, sources said.
Sources also said the key agenda of the meeting was to discuss the names of the chief ministers and cabinet ministers in the three states.
While Yogi Adityanath will take oath as the CM of Uttar Pradesh for a second term on March 25, there’s still no word yet on the composition of his cabinet. The BJP is now in the process of making last-minute tweaks to the list of cabinet and council of ministers.
The CM face in Uttarkhand is, however, still under suspense. The BJP has scheduled a meeting of the party legislature in Dehradun on Monday evening where the CM name will be announced. Central observers Rajnath Singh and Meenakshi Lekhi will reach the Uttarakhand capital on Monday and announce the name of the new legislative party leader.
A BJP insider told IANS that the primary agenda of Sunday’s meeting was to discuss the name of the Uttarakhand chief minister as incumbent Pushkar Singh Dhami had lost the assembly polls. Even as the suspense over the name of the CM continues, Uttarakhand BJP leaders confirmed that the newly elected chief minister will take the oath with 11 cabinet ministers at the city’s Parade Ground at 11 am on March 23. This is perhaps the first time when the BJP is faced with a situation where a sitting CM has lost an election but the party has returned to power for the straight second term with a thumping majority.
In Goa, caretaker Chief Minister Pramod Sawant is likely to again head the new government, but he is officially yet to be announced as the CM face. Sources said that Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar and L Murugan, BJP’s central observer and co-observer, respectively, for Goa, will reach Panaji at around 1.30 pm tomorrow and the BJP Legislative Party meeting will be held at 4 pm.
On Friday while speaking to reporters, Goa’s former Art and Culture Minister Govind Gaude and Sanguem BJP MLA Subhash Phaldesai had said that Sawant would lead the new dispensation and that a formal announcement would be made soon. Speculation has been rife about two camps in the BJP — one led by Sawant and the other by his former Health Minister Vishwajit Rane — over the chief ministership. Both Rane and Sawant have, however, denied any such skirmishes.
The BJP earlier on Sunday announced N Biren Singh as the CM face of Manipur after he was unanimously elected as the Manipur BJP Legislative Party leader. Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Union law and justice minister Kiren Rijiju were in Imphal today as central observers to announce the CM name.
The BJP had won all the four states with a thumping majority, while in Punjab, AAP decimated the Congress, by romping home 92 of the 117 assembly seats. Earlier, the BJP had delayed the announcement and oath-taking of its chief ministers due to the period ahead of Holi that is considered inauspicious.
(With agency inputs)
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