Modi 3.0 Has 3 Ministers From Northeast: What's the Strategy Behind the Choices?

While Rijiju and Sonowal's return to the NDA government was more or less expected, Margherita is a surprise pick.

(Photo: Vibhusita Singh/ The Quint)

Three Members of Parliament (MPs) from the northeast have been given ministerial berths in the new National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

They are: former Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Kiren Rijiju (from Arunachal Pradesh), and BJP Rajya Sabha member Pabitra Margherita (from Assam).

Sonowal and Rijiju are among the 13 MPs elected form Lok Sabha seats across the northeast comprising eight states and 25 Lok Sabha constituencies. While Rijiju and Sonowal's return to the NDA government was more or less expected, Margherita is a surprise pick.

How are they significant to the BJP? Let's take a look.

Sarbananda Sonowal: The 'Jatiya Nayak' of Assam

Former Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, who won from Dibrugarh Lok Sabha seat for the second time by 2.76 lakh votes, served as the Union Minister of Ports, Shipping, and Waterways, and the Minister of AYUSH in PM Modi's previous term. He was previously elected from the seat as an Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) MP in 2004.

A key face for the saffron party in Assam and the northeast, Sonowal was the Minister of State (Independent Charge) of Youth Affairs from 2014 to 2016, after which he resigned to head the first BJP-led coalition in Assam. 

But his term as a chief minister was far from smooth, with the controversy surrounding the National Registry of Citizens (NRC) and the subsequent protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act.

Ironically, Sonowal himself had risen to prominence in the 1990s when he challenged a contentious Act which determined the citizenship of a person (Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act, 1983), under which the responsibility of proving a person's nationality in a case where their nationality was under question lay not with that person but on the complainant.

He challenged this Act in the Supreme Court, which later struck it down. This incident earned him the sobriquet 'Jatiya Nayak' (Assamese National Leader).

After the completion of his tenure as chief minister in 2021, Himanta Biswa Sarma took over the reins in Assam. A few months later, Sonowal was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Assam and before being inducted into Modi's Cabinet. 

Subhrangshu Pratim Sarmah, an Assam-based scholar told The Quint: "Sonowal, over the years, has cultivated a clean image with good oratorial skills and is popular among the masses in Assam. This has ensured him another stint at the Centre."

Kiren Rijiju: A Key Player in Modi's 'Look East Policy'

Another prominent face of the BJP in the northeast is Kiren Rijiju, a four-time MP from the Arunachal West Lok Sabha seat.

Riju previously served as the Minister of Earth Sciences and Food Processing Industries from 2023 to 2024. He also served as the MoS for Home Affairs from 2014 to 2019, MoS for Minority Affairs from 2019 to 2021, MoS (Independent Charge) for Sports and Youth Affairs from 2019 to 2021, and as the Law minister from 2021 to 2023.

He won from the Arunachal West seat defeating state Congress president and party nominee Nabam Tuki by a margin of 1,00,738 votes in the recently held parliamentary polls.

Rijiju's tenure as the law minister (which lasted from 2021-2023), however, was not without its share of controversies.

In 2022, the MP had called the collegium system, whereby sitting judges appoint new judges to constitutional courts, "opaque" and "alien to our Constitution."

The minister also pushed for government role in the appointment of judges. In January 2023, the minister wrote to Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, suggesting the inclusion of a government nominee in the decision-making process for shortlisting of judges, as he opined that doing so will "infuse transparency and public accountability."

In May 2023, he was dropped as the law minister amid a deepening stand-off between the judiciary and the executive.

"What has really elevated Rijiju to the top is the strategic northeast focus of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He has emerged as a key player in the BJP's 'Look East' policy. His role as an important representative for Arunachal Pradesh, a state which shares its border with China, was further cemented by his re-election in 2019," a professor of political science at the Rajiv Gandhi University in Arunachal Pradesh told The Quint on the condition of anonymity.

Ahom Factor, Countering Congress: What Worked for Pabitra Margherita

Pabitra Margherita is the third face from the northeast in the Narendra Modi-led government.

A Rajya Sabha member from Assam since 2022, he has been what many are terming a 'surprise' pick.

Hailing from Margherita, an industrial town in eastern Assam's Tinsukia district, a part of the Dibrugarh Lok Sabha seat, his original name is Pabitra Gogoi and he uses the town's name as his surname.

Subhrangshu Pratim Sarmah attributed Margherita's induction into Modi's Cabinet as the saffron party's strategy to counter the impact of the perceived Congress resurgence in the eastern part of Assam after senior Congress leader Gaurav Gogoi's victory from the Jorhat Lok Sabha seat.

"Inducting Margherita into the Cabinet is more of a strategic move rather than a surprise move. Like Gaurav Gogoi, Margherita is an Ahom, which is a politically potent community in eastern Assam, along with the Adivasis or the 'tea tribes'. Combined together, these communities dictate the fate of 49 Assembly segments in the three eastern Assam constituencies, and the adjoining ones across central and northern Assam," Sarmah explained to The Quint.

"While the BJP has been winning most of these Assembly seats since 2016, Gogoi's victory in Jorhat (which was the capital of the Ahom kingdom) is being perceived as a sign that the Ahoms and tea tribes could be dissatisfied with the BJP ahead of the 2026 Assembly elections in the state."

Moreover, Gogoi's victory from the Jorhat seat from where he contested from the first time (his family's pocket-borough Kaliabor was redrawn and renamed Kaziranga in last year's delimitation of parliamentary and Assembly constituencies) has unnerved the BJP, and the party doesn't want to take any chances, Sarmah added.

Northeast Representation Over the Years

The eight northeastern states together have 25 Lok Sabha seats and 14 Rajya Sabha seats. The current Modi 3.0 government has three representatives from the region in the Cabinet.

In 2019, two ministers from the region were inducted into the Cabinet, namely Kiren Rijiju and Rameshwar Teli, who served as the MoS for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Labour and Employment. Teli, however, did contest this election.

In a Cabinet rejig in 2021, three more ministers were added to the list. This increased the tally to five and made it the highest representation that the region has had since Independence.

In 2014, there were three from the region – Sonowal, Rajen Gohain, and Rijiju.

"In previous governments, the northeast region at best used to get a token representation of one or two ministers," said Subhrangshu Pratim Sarmah.

In 2004, then prime minister Manmohan Singh had Santosh Mohan Dev from Assam and PR Kyndiah from Meghalaya in his Cabinet.

The Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led government had no Cabinet minister from the northeast. However, there were two ministers of state from the region – Chaoba Singh (Manipur) and Bijoya Chakravarty (Assam).

Assam got its first Union Cabinet-rank minister, former president of India Fakruddin Ali Ahmed when Indira Gandhi was in power in the late 1960s.

Another Union Cabinet minister from the Indira Gandhi era was Devkant Barooah. Congress MP from Assam BK Handique had also served as a Union Cabinet minister.

Rijiju's elevation to the cabinet rank in 2021 marked a first for Arunachal Pradesh. Prior to Rijiju, there was a Union minister of state (urban development) from the region, PK Thungon, who was also the first chief minister of Assam.

In the early 1990s, then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao had made Purno A Sangma (the father of current Chief Minister of Meghalaya Conrad K Sangma) a Union Cabinet minister, thus breaking the spell for Meghalaya.

None of the other northeastern states, namely Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram and Sikkim, have had a Union Cabinet minister.