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July 06, 2016

India: Modi Govt Reshuffle Nine out of 20 the ministers upgraded and inducted today are from the RSS

The Telegraph - 6 July 2016

Sangh score 9 out of 20
Radhika Ramaseshan

New Delhi, July 5: Nine out of 20 - or 45 per cent - of the ministers upgraded and inducted today are from the RSS.

Notwithstanding the RSS's insistence that it is "apolitical" and "does not have anything to do with the BJP or the central government" - its spokespersons make this claim all the time - BJP president Amit Shah went to the Sangh headquarters here last night with the list of ministers and secured its ratification before the names were "informally" passed on to the media.

In the lead-up to finalising the inductions, Shah was either in touch with RSS leaders himself or updated them through BJP general secretary (organisation) Ramlal.

Prakash Javadekar, promoted as cabinet minister, is a professed RSS " swayamsevak" and an "active" participant in the Ram temple "agitation". The junior ministers associated with the Sangh parivar are: Faggan Singh Kulaste, Vijay Goel, Anil Madhav Dave, Jasnwantsinh Bhabhor, Mahendra Nath Pandey, Mansukh Mandaviya, Parshottam Rupala and P.P. Chaudhary.

Kulaste and Bhabhor, tribals from Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, worked for the Sangh's Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram. Kulaste was part of a movement advocating an end to reservations for those tribals who had converted to Christianity. Chaudhary, a Rajasthan MP, became an RSS "swayamsevak" at eight.

Dave, a former pracharak, worked hard to please the RSS by organising the Vaicharik Kumbh, an ideological conclave, on the sidelines of the Simhasta Kumbha Mela in Ujjain in May.