Patna,(BiharTimes): Till a few years back the Bharatiya Janata Party was considered as the outfit of Brahmins and Banias. Post May 2014 Lok Sabha election there is not a single minister of these two castes from the Hindi heartland state of Bihar––even after Sunday’s expansion.

It is not that these two castes did not vote for the saffron party. They did overwhelmingly, yet did not get represenrtation in the cabinet. There are in all seven ministers from Bihar in the Union cabinet, while another Dharmendra Pradhan, though from Odisha, is the Rajya Sabha MP from Bihar. Till recently he was the party incharge of Bihar. Only last month he was replaced by Bhupendra Yadav, who is from Rajasthan.

Modi instead inducted one more Rajput, Rajiv Pratap Rudy after Radha Mohan Singh was made the agriculture minister in May. Today he also inducted a Bhumihar, (Giriraj Singh) and a Yadav (Ram Kripal).

Apart from them Ravi Shankar Prasad (Kayastha), Ram Vilas Paswan (Dalit) and Upendra Kushwaha (Koeri) are ministers from Bihar.

There is no denying the fact that the cabinet expansion has been done keeping in mind the 2015 Assembly election in Bihar. Modi was forced to realize as to how important Bhumihar and Yadav voters are. The party paid heavily in the by-elections held for 10 Assembly seats on August 21––the grand alliance won six of them––by not taking into the cabinet a single Bhumihar. Besides, if the party wants to win the next year Assembly election it needs to rope in at least 11-12 per cent Yadav voters. Therefore, ignoring Ram Kripal was unthinkable.

Bhumihars and Yadavs are two very important political castes of Bihar which no party can risk to ignore for long. Political compulsions, not only in Bihar but elsewhere too, forced Modi to abandon the earlier pretense of small and efficient cabinet. Now he is leading a huge cabinet.

Notwithstanding this expansion the prime minister has failed to satisfy all. True the Rajputs have got over-representation––may be because of Rajnath Singh’s presence––the Brahmins and Banias, the two backbones of the saffron brigade since the erstwhile Bharatiya Jan Sangh years, have not been accommodated.

Brahmin MPs like Ashwini Choubey and Kirti Azad have much longer experience than Giriraj Singh, the first time MP. Ashwini too may be the first timer, but he is an old RSS hand and has a much longer experience as MLA from Bhagalpur. Yet they lost the race. So did the Banias.

But the trading community can take solace from the presence of Sushil Kumar Modi, who may be projected as the chief ministerial candidate of the party next year. However, there is still a strong lobby within the party which opposes his candidature.

The BJP has failed to make anyone from the Extreme Backward Castes as minister nor from Mahadalit. The Paswan caste do not come in the criteria of Mahadalit.

The EBCs and Mahadalits together form more than 40 per cent of Bihar electorale. The lone Muslim in the cabinet is not Shahnawaz Husain, but Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, of UP.

“It is difficult to give representation to each and every social group, yet Modi has now woken up to realize that he can not ignore important militant caste groups like Rajput, Bhumihar and Yadav,.” said a commentator on the condition of anonymity.