Can Rajnath Singh bite the bullet?
Just hours after he was informed of his appointment as defence minister on May 31, Rajnath Singh, 67, dialled army chief General Bipin Rawat. He wanted to spend his first working day, June 3, in Siachen. The army chief readily agreed. A little over 48 hours later, the defence minister was helicoptered into Siachen base camp, where he spent a day with troops at the world's highest military deployment-12,000 feet above sea level. "I started at the top," Singh told his close aides after the visit, "and I will stay there."
That statement could just as well have described Singh's successful behind-the-scenes manoeuvring to maintain his position in the new government. In the post-election cabinet formation, he has retained his seat in six of the eight cabinet committees that he was part of as home minister in the previous government. Perhaps Singh appealed to the fact that national security is a critical issue for the BJP. It was certainly a prime focus in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 2019 re-election campaign, riding on the February 26 air strikes on a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training camp in Balakot, in Pakistan's Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. And the composition of the prime minister's core security team-home minister Amit Shah, national security advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval and foreign minister S. Jaishankar-does suggest an unswerving, hawkish security focus.
The workings of the defence ministry will be pivotal to the new government, and Singh will himself be judged by what he is able to achieve
