NEW DELHI: India’s Hindu nationalist government overhauled its cabinet over the weekend in a move experts said on Sunday was aimed at bolstering the Indian premier’s BJP party ahead of forthcoming state and national elections.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee reshuffled his ministerial council on Saturday for the tenth time since assuming power in 1999, adding six new faces and switching several portfolios.

The new arrangement takes the number of ministers to an all-time high of 80.

Vajpayee heads a disparate coalition of about two dozen parties, but most of the new ministers were from his BJP, and analysts said the reshuffle was meant to send out a clear signal to the party’s allies that it was still the strongest force within the coalition.

BJP President Venkaiaha Naidu has in the past said the party is confident of winning the general election due in 2004 on its own, taking 300 seats in the 545-member lower house of parliament.

“Naidu has been harping on the 300 mark for some time. It (the reshuffle) was their way of asserting themselves,” said N. Bhaskara Rao, director of the New Delhi-based think tank Centre for Media Studies.

But the main reason for the reshuffle — to include Mamata Banerjee, the leader of the BJP’s powerful ally Trinamool Congress — was lost because the firebrand leader had last-minute differences with the BJP.

The Trinamool is a political force that could pose a serious challenge to the ruling Marxists in their bastion of West Bengal state, which sends a sizeable number of MPs to the national parliament, analysts said.

After the reshuffle, Vajpayee hinted that he would iron out the differences with Banerjee and soon admit her back into the ministerial council.

But the media said the changes were also made with an eye on the elections in four key states later this year and the general election, scheduled for 2004.

Former chief minister of the central Uttar Pradesh state, Rajnath Singh, was made agriculture minister after the resignation of Ajit Singh.

Experts said Singh’s induction was aimed at wooing the powerful Rajput community, to which the minister belongs.

“The Rajput votes are important for all the states which go to polls this year,” said Rao.

Two fresh faces to also find a place in the cabinet were Prahlad Singh Patel from Madhya Pradesh state and Kailash Meghwal from Rajasthan — both of which go to the polls later this year.

One of the most noticeable moves was the replacement of Shahnawaz Hussain as civil aviation minister by junior Commerce Minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy.—AFP