Officially, Rajnath Singh, the most prominent UP leader, may have the number two rank in the Modi government at the Centre, but everyone knows Arun Jaitley is the most powerful minister in Modi government. So as the budget for home ministry kept getting cut, Rajnath’s frowns kept becoming more pronounced. He took his complain to Modi because the budget cuts directly affected those projects in the ministry that were on his priority list – for instance, Naxalist movement, North-East and police reforms. These are also the programmes that the home ministry handles directly. For instance, Rajnath Singh was taking all sorts of measures for smart policing. But under the new budget, the resources for policy modernisation have been handed over directly to the states. It will also be the states’ responsibility to manage the funds; which means if the state government wants, it can divert that money to some other programme. Rajnath considers this as risking national security. For instance, a demand for additional Rs 190 crore was made for border forces, but it got merely Rs 50 crore. The coming days may see some friction among colleagues.