Narendra Modi, India’s Prime Minister reportedly did a cabinet-wide reshuffle in a bid to assuage the backlash generated from his handling of the pandemic. The country’s health minister, oil and IT were victims of the reshuffle.
The Health Minister, Harsh Vardhan, and his deputy were asked to step down, he was replaced by Mansukh Laxman Mandaviya. It is believed that the minister is paying the price for the government’s inefficiency in coping with the second wave of the disease.
India’s death toll surpassed 400,000 last week, but many believed a larger number of casualties went undocumented. India has now managed to vaccine less than 5% of its 1.3 billion population
“There is a lesson for ministers in these resignations. If things go right the credit will go to the PM, if things go wrong the minister will be the fall guy,”
Opposition leader P. Chidambaram
“If it was really about the COVID-19 mismanagement, was (Vardhan) solely responsible? Definitely not,” Rijo M. John, health economist and a professor at the Rajagiri College of Social Sciences in the southern city of Kochi, said on Twitter.
“The buck actually stops with the PM himself,” John said.
Rijo M. John
The IT Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad also lost his appointment to Ashwini Vaishnaw amidst a nationwide clampdown on international social media giants much to their relief as disclosed in closed quarters.
No reason was explicitly stated for his removal.
