No Place For Telugu Voice In Union Cabinet; Dattatreya Removed, TS-AP Ignored 

New Delhi: Nine new ministers, all from the BJP, took oath at the Rashtrapati Bhavan as Prime Minister Narendra Modi revamped his cabinet on Sunday.

Four ministers including Dharmendra Pradhan, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal have been elevated to Cabinet rank.

Interestingly, PM Modi's 76-member new council of ministers does not have any representation from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh except for Nirmala Sitaraman who is elected to Rajya Sabha from Karnataka and she's basically a Tamilian. Her only connection with AP is she is the wife of Parakala Prabhakar, AP government’s adviser. The only minister from Telangana BJP's senior leader Bandaru Dattatreya was removed from the cabinet for his utter non-performance.

The only Telugu minister in the Union Cabinet, Civil Aviation Minister P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju belongs to BJP’s ally Telugu Desam Party.

The equations in the formation of new cabinet indicate that the BJP has no hopes in Telangana and AP in the 2019 general elections though the party claims there is no link between berths in the Central Cabinet and its electoral prospects.

Though the Prime Minister can include five more ministers, it is left for accomodating BJP's new ally JD (U) of Nitish Kumar and AIADMK which is still going through leadership imbroglio. The maximum strength of the Union Cabinet can be 81.

That way, Telangana and AP have no chances of getting any representation in the Central cabinet for this term which will come to a close hardly in 18 months. Elections are expected in the first quarter of 2019.

The new State Ministers include ex-Mumbai Police chief and now BJP lawmaker Satya Pal Singh, retired diplomat Hardeep Singh Puri, retired IAS officer KJ Alphons and former Home Secretary Raj Kumar Singh, also a lawmaker.

The others include BJP lawmaker from Bihar Ashwini Kumar Choubey and Shiv Pratap Shukla from Uttar Pradesh. Virendra Kumar from Madhya Pradesh, Ananthkumar Hegde from Karnataka and Gajendra Singh Shekhawat from Rajasthan represent states where elections will be held soon.

Government sources said PM Modi based his selection of new members for his team on "4Ps - passion, proficiency, professional and political acumen", to deliver on his vision of "a new India". The new ministers will be strategically deployed in key ministries and will focus on last mile delivery directly to the people, they said.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is said to be "disappointed" at his party being left out of today's reshuffle despite joining the BJP's national coalition about two weeks ago. The BJP leadership was unable to construct a formula to please all allies, sources said. Allies will be inducted in another cabinet expansion soon, they said.