Nepali Prime Minister Initiates a Major Cabinet Reshuffle

Prime Minister of Nepal KP Oli announced a drastic reshuffle of his Cabinet on Friday. This major rejig comes amid political uncertainty.

Summarizing the reshuffle:

• Excepting four ministers, shift all the ministers from their incumbent offices.
• Absorb ten ministers from the Mahantha Thakur-led faction. This induction includes Deputy Prime Minister Rajendra Mahato from the Janata Samajbadi Party Nepal.
• The Finance Minister, Bishnu Paudel, will be sworn in as the senior-most Deputy Prime Minister. The junior leader Raghubir Mahaseth will be anointed as another Deputy Prime Minister. This translates to Nepal having three Deputy PMs’.
• Health Ministry will welcome Sher Bahadur Tamang as the Health Minister. He will spearhead the combat against COVID-19.
• The biggest development of this rejig is the PM centralizing the national power. The PM will be heading seven ministries which are: Defence, home affairs, forests and environment, communications and information technology, federal affairs and general administration, agriculture and livestock development, industry and commerce.

The reshuffle ushers in seven political figures from Oli’s CPN-UML, and the rest of the ten ministers are inducted for the JSPN’s split faction. The Prime Minister is likely to add more minister from CPN-UML for the seven ministries which are under his purview.

The new Deputy Prime Ministers, along with the new Ministers, were sworn in by President Bidhya Devi Bhandari at the Presidential Office. Additionally, state ministers were also sworn in by the Prime Minister at the same ceremony.

Tabulated below are the incumbent ministers, after the cabinet reshuffle: