Modi-Shah Mission 350: Dream Team taking shape

New Delhi: By Friday night, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will have finalised the list of the new team who will take the oath of office at Ashoka Hall at the presidential palace Rashtrapati Bhawan at 10 am on Sunday, just before PM Modi leaves for China to attend a BRICS summit. 

With only 18 months left in office to deliver on his government's tall promises, these are the men and women whom Prime Minister Narendra Modi will rely on to bring about BJP president Amit Shah's Mission 350-plus closer to reality.

Of the more than a dozen new faces who will be inducted as several senior BJP leaders are redeployed to strengthen the party, the men to watch out for will be possible inductees Ram Madhav, Murlidhar Rao, Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, and Jayant Sinha, who is reportedly being given cabinet rank. 

The names of other party MPs who will form part of the core team could include Prahlad Patel, Satyapal Singh and Pralhad Joshi as also Suresh Angadi, from Karnataka as part of PM Modi- Amit Shah's plans for a 'Mission South' to expand its base and strengthen its position electorally. The Modi-Shah plan is to tap at least 150-odd seats from states like West Bengal, Assam, Odisha, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. 

 The buzz in Delhi as key members of the party including Home Minister Rajnath Singh, External Affairs Minister Susham Swaraj and others met Friday night ahead of the reshuffle that has left many egos bruised is that while Mr. Arun Jaitley will keep Finance, he will hand over Defence to a new minister, possibly Prakash Javadekar, and Suresh Prabhu will shed Railways and get environment. 

The reshuffle is the third such exercise since PM Modi took office in May 2014.