NEW DELHI, 30 June — Indian Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani, seen as a hard-line Hindu extremist, was named deputy prime minister yesterday in a shake-up of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s coalition Cabinet, officials said. The presidential palace announcement said Advani, who is the most powerful man after Vajpayee in the Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party, will continue as home minister.
Media reports earlier in the day said Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh was also set to swap portfolios with Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha in the Cabinet shake-up. The 74-year-old Advani, who studied law in Karachi before the subcontinent’s partition in 1947, is the seventh leader in the history of independent India to be given the deputy premier’s post.
The Press Trust of India, quoting unidentified sources after a meeting of India’s ruling and coalition party members here, said the move was among a number to be announced by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Yashwant has been under a cloud with the BJP members who have criticized him for failing to sell economic reforms to the electorate. The meeting at Vajpayee’s residence was aimed at giving finishing touches to the long-awaited reshuffle.
Earlier yesterday, BJP President Jana Krishnamurthy, resigned ahead of his speculated induction into the Vajpayee Cabinet. He is likely to be replaced by Venkaiah Naidu, the minister for rural development, reports said.
The Cabinet reshuffle had recently become more urgent as one minister has resigned and another has become the speaker of the lower house of Parliament.
Coal and Mines Minister Ram Vilas Paswan quit the Cabinet in early May in protest communal violence in India’s western state of Gujarat in which more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed. Heavy Industry Minister Manohar Joshi quit a week later following his nomination to the speaker’s post.
Sources in the government said earlier this week that Vajpayee could bring in new faces from inside the BJP as well as from its allies in the 20-party coalition government. The prime minister has been holding extensive consultations with senior Cabinet colleagues over the past week on changing the portfolios of some ministers.
He last carried out a major reshuffle in September in a move which was meant to speed up economic reforms. Several new faces were brought in and Privatization Minister Arun Shourie, who has been pushing India’s disinvestment program, was elevated to Cabinet rank.
