Narendra Modi Grapples With First Challenge - Filling His Cabinet

New Delhi: India's prime minister-to-be Narendra Modi was huddled in discussions with close aides and advisers on Sunday, finalising the names of people to join his cabinet and grappling with the crucial decision of who will be his finance minister.

Two days after he won a thumping victory in the general election, there was little clarity about who Mr Modi would include in his team, even in other key portfolios like defence, home and external affairs.

The alliance led by Mr Modi's BJP won 336 of the 543 seats in India's lower house of parliament, making it the first time in a quarter of a century that the country will not be led by a coalition government.

One of his most important decisions will be whether to name front-runner Arun Jaitley to the finance minister's post. Mr Jaitley is eminently suited, sources in the BJP said, but he was defeated in his race for a parliamentary seat and that is a minus point.

Yet Mr Jaitley is a former commerce minister, is regarded as a capable administrator, and is one of the few people in the party who has experience but is not too old at 61.

Mr Modi and his inner circle have played their cards close to their chests and are unlikely to reveal who will take senior cabinet posts until a meeting of the BJP parliamentary leadership on Tuesday, one senior party leader said.

The Tuesday meeting is expected to confirm Mr Modi as the party's parliamentary leader, after which he will meet President Pranab Mukherjee to formally start the process of forming the government. He is likely to be sworn in as prime minister this week.

The BJP was last in power 10 years ago, and some of the ministers who served then are now past their sell by date, leaving Mr Modi a relatively small pool of experience at his disposal. On the plus side, the party's runaway success in the election has brought a lot of new faces into the decision-making lower house of parliament.

All ministers have to be members of parliament, either the upper or lower house, although they have six months to comply. Mr Jaitley remains a member of the upper house, the Rajya Sabha.

Like outgoing finance minister P. Chidambaram, Mr Jaitley is a corporate lawyer and a suave English-speaking politician seen as a moderate in the BJP. He would be a popular choice with investors.

"It doesn't change the situation all that much," said a senior figure in the party, referring to Mr Jaitley's defeat in the city of Amritsar. "He's already a member of parliament and he is a trusted person for Modi-ji. It's still a strong possibility. Whether he lost is not a big issue."

Another party source concurred he remained the front-runner for finance. "If you look very carefully we don't have too many options," the source said.

Other sources close to Modi's campaign say the final decision on who will become finance minister has not yet been taken, with other names being mentioned, that include Deepak Parekh, the chairman of the Housing Development Finance Corporation Limited  and K. V. Kamath, a former chairman of Infosys and CEO of ICICI Bank.

Neither has political experience but sources have said Mr Modi may look to competent leaders in the states, or even try to bring professionals into his cabinet.
 
On Saturday, Mr Jaitley himself was asked about the shortage of experienced hands available and seemed to hint that Mr Modi might draw on younger blood.

"I think you know, politics abhors a vacuum, and when people are given a responsibility they fill in that space that is required, it is only then that people occupy that space," Jaitley told a television channel.

Mr Modi, 63, is entering New Delhi's power circle for the first time after running Gujarat for 13 years. He was named the BJP's prime ministerial candidate last year and ran a stunning election campaign with a tight group of trusted aides, sidelining many senior party leaders.

After Mr Modi, the person who emerged with the most glory in the election was his close aide Amit Shah, who ran the BJP's campaign in Uttar Pradesh, where the party won an unprecedented 73 seats along with allies out of 80 in the country's politically most important state.

Mr Shah, who served as home minister in Gujarat, is the new prime minister's most trusted aide and would be an obvious choice for a top job, if it were not for one thing, he faces the charge of murder and is out on bail.

Expectations are that the top ministries will go to seniors in the party, including Rajnath Singh, who is reportedly being considered to run the powerful home ministry or defence ministry but may be unwilling to leave his current job.

Sushma Swaraj, who led the opposition in the lower house of parliament for the past five years but is not close to Mr Modi, is also likely to get a top post as is party treasurer, businessman Piyush Goyal.

Mr Modi, who campaigned on promises of "smaller government, more governance," may look at restructuring and merging some ministries, in particular those that deal with energy, BJP sources said. India currently has separate ministries for petroleum, power, coal and renewable energy.

"There will be less number of ministries... that decision should come when the cabinet is decided," said Gopal Agarwal, a member of BJP's executive committee who was until recently the head of its economic cell.