Prime Minister Narendra Modi called on President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Tuesday, a day after Union minister George Kurian resigned following the expiry of his Rajya Sabha term amid buzz in Delhi that the cabinet may soon see a reshuffle.
Kurian, who served as Union Minister of state for minority affairs as well as for fisheries, animal Husbandry and dairying, was not renominated by the BJP for the June 18 Rajya Sabha elections. His Rajya Sabha tenure ended on June 21.
In fact, two Union ministers – Ravneet Singh Bittu and Kurian – were not renominated for the June 18 Rajya Sabha elections. Bittu has not yet formally tendered his resignation. Under the law, he can remain a minister without being an MP for six months after the expiry of his term, but he would have to be re-nominated within the six-month period to continue beyond December 21.
But he has said is headed to Punjab now, and declared his intent to dive into state politics. “Now, I want to serve Punjab and will be contesting the Vidhan Sabha elections to be held early next year,” Bittu told reporters, noting that he has already “packed his bags” to focus entirely on the state after 17 years in parliamentary politics. He is likely to be fielded from the Ludhiana (Central) assembly constituency within the Ludhiana Lok Sabha segment, which he represented as a Congressman in the past but had lost in 2024.
Two other Union ministers are reportedly faced with the ‘one man, one post’ principle that mostly governs BJP appointments.
Harsh Malhotra, appointed Delhi BJP president recently, is Union minister of state for road transport and corporate affairs. Pankaj Chaudhary – who in December 2025 took over as party chief for Uttar Pradesh, where elections are due with Punjab – is MoS for finance. Party precedent suggests both will have to step down from their ministerial positions.
The Union cabinet is set to meet at 11 am on June 24, though it is not clear whether announcements of reshuffle will come within the next 24 hours or gradually. The Modi regime has largely operated with surprises and stealth, making speculation riskier.
3 political calculations shaping the reshuffle
Three broad considerations, however, are seen to be dominating discussions. These include accommodation of recent political defectors such as the Raghav Chadha-led group that came from AAP, or Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar’s TMC rebel group, and the newest breakaway MPs from Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT).
Then there is the arithmetic for a two-thirds parliamentary majority.
Plus, political posturing ahead of the upcoming assembly elections in Punjab, the Sikh-majority state where the Hindutva-driven BJP is trying to make a mark on its own after playing second fiddle to the Shiromani Akali Dal for decades.
The “merger” of seven Rajya Sabha MPs from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) with the BJP in April brought in possible contenders for ministerial berths, chief among them being Raghav Chadha, who has since praised Modi vociferously by even pegging him above India’s first PM Jawaharlal Nehru.
Then came the dramatic split of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) over the last two weeks. After that came Team Uddhav’s MPs who switched to NDA constituent Shiv Sena of Eknath Shinde.
This has expanded the BJP-led NDA’s pool of potential new faces for the cabinet.
The defectors from AAP include, besides Chadha, ex-cricketer Harbhajan Singh, former AAP strategist Sandeep Pathak, and business magnates Ashok Mittal, Rajinder Gupta and Vikramjit Sahney – all six from Punjab. Swati Maliwal came from Delhi.
In West Bengal, 20 rebel TMC MPs announced their merger with the obscure Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI) and declared support for the NDA. Following the mass defection, Kakoli Ghosh noted that the move was aimed at avoiding legal complications: “We will merge with the Nationalist Citizens Party of India and support the NDA.” Of them, Kakoli Ghosh and Sudeep Bandyopadhyay are the names doing the rounds.
These defectors bring in numbers that go beyond the cabinet too.
Delimitation arithmetic
A major driver of the defections is the BJP’s urgency to secure a two-thirds majority in Parliament, HT has reported. The government may re-initiate its push for delimitation – packaged as necessary to operationalise the women’s reservation bill passed in 2023 – once assured of the two-thirds majority required for constitutional amendments.
The delimitation bill – meant to expand the Lok Sabha from 543 to 850 seats and redraw constituency boundaries – was defeated in April as the government does not have the special majority needed for a constitutional amendment.
Recent defections have brought the NDA closer to this threshold, but the calculations remain tight. Every defector induction thus narrows the gap.
Punjab posturing
At least one vacancy to be created by Bittu’s imminent exit from the cabinet opens the question of Punjab’s representation. The BJP has already played the Jat Sikh card by appointing businessman and former Congress MLA Kewal Singh Dhillon as its Punjab unit president; it may now need to balance that by bringing Hindu faces.
Among the names circulating is Raghav Chadha, the youngest Rajya Sabha MP ever and a key organiser of AAP’s 2022 Punjab victory before his defection to the BJP in April. However, former Punjab BJP chief Sunil Jakhar, another Congress import, is at least one more Hindu name in the mix.
Among Saffron Party old-timers, Tarun Chugh was recently sent to the Rajya Sabha by the BJP from Madhya Pradesh. An Amritsar native who is a national general secretary of the party, he has been active in Punjab in recent weeks with an anti-drugs drive, even doing lassi-drinking photo-ops with Punjabi singer Honey Singh who has been speaking about his personal struggle with addiction.
Punjab also became the centre of urgency when BJP’s national president Nitin Nabin, who is set to make his own new team soon, cut short his high-profile three-day organisational tour to the state on Monday, and he and Chadha both flew back to Delhi.
At a state-level meeting in Ludhiana, Chadha shared the stage with Nabin in his first major public appearance with senior BJP leadership in Punjab since his defection from AAP. Nabin even bypassed his planned itinerary to Chandigarh. He instead met Punjab Governor Gulab Chand Kataria briefly at Ludhiana’s Halwara airport before flying directly back to Delhi.