 "Manmohan Singh reshuffles his pack")
Two seniors from poll-bound Rajasthan, Sis Ram Ola and Girija Vyas, made a comeback to the cabinet, as did another veteran, Oscar Fernandes. So did another entrant from a poll-bound and troubled state, K S Rao, a longtime Lok Sabha member from Andhra. The railways ministry, vacated by C P Joshi yesterday morning as he was appointed party general secretary, went to Mallikarjun Kharge, till now the labour minister and also one of those disappointed last month in the contentious race for chief minister of Karnataka.
Four other faces were brought in as ministers of state, one a veteran (Manikrao Gavit, from Maharashtra, a nine-term tribal MP) and three freshers, including one more from Andhra (J D Seelam, a former IAS officer and a dalit) and two others, Santosh Chowdhury (from Punjab, which recently lost heavily on representation in the council of ministers) and EMS Natchiappan from Tamil Nadu, another state whose representation was depleted after the DMK pullout. He's been a member of the MPs' panel probing the telecom spectrum scam and part of the panel of presiding officers of the Rajya Sabha.
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The two shuffles, party and ministry, seemed to buoy the Congress party, coinciding as it did with the split in the opposition NDA. Newly appointed communications department chief Ajay Maken said, "The Congress under Vice President Rahul Gandhi is surging forward and the NDA is gradually shrinking."
Ola gets labour and employment. Vyas, a former National Commission on Women chief, has replaced Maken at housing and urban poverty alleviation. Oscar Fernandes got the roads and highways ministry. He had held several portfolios earlier; a confidant of the Congress president, he had been party general secretary till now.
Andhra Pradesh, where the Congress seems to be in danger of a drubbing in the Assembly polls to be held alongside the general elections next year, due to the delay in deciding on statehood for Telangana, saw K S Rao, an oldtimer from there to the Lok Sabha as mentioned, inducted as textiles minister. Incidentally, he is a strong advocate of a united Andhra. He'd also, on being b.
Manikrao Gavit is MoS for social justice and empowerment, Santosh Chowdhury gets health & family welfare, Seelam is an MoS for finance and Natchiappan is in commerce and industry.
While the Congress made much of the new "young" look in the party reshuffle, with 52 being the average age of office bearers, this cannot be said of the cabinet rejig.
Ola is 86 and Kharge, 71, for instance; Fernandes and Vyas are also seniors. Gavit is in his late 70s and KK S Rao is touching 70.
Birender Singh, dropped as general secretary yesterday, was included in the Congress Working Committee today.
The Cabinet rejig was necessitated after the resignation of DMK ministers and of Pawan Kumar Bansal and Ashwani Kumar on corruption-related allegations. After overhauling party and government, the Congress-led UPA now hopes to get ahead of the BJP in its quest for 2014.