Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s offices worked the phone all Wednesday to inform 59 colleagues to stay in town and be ready to be sworn in as ministers following the unveiling of the second list of council of ministers. An earlier list of 19 Cabinet ministers was announced two days ago. With today’s list, the strength of the council of ministers goes up to 79, including the PM. It is subject to a ceiling of 82.
Notable omissions are former law minister HR Bhardwaj, who doesn’t feature even in the second list; Sis Ram Ola, who won the election from Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan but was not invited to join; and former HRD minister Arjun Singh, who had stepped down even before the ministry making exercise began. Saifuddin Soz, water resources minister in the first UPA government, has also been dropped after Farooq Abdullah and Ghulam Nabi Azad — both from the Kashmir valley — have been inducted in the council of ministers.
The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), the second largest ally of the ruling Congress party, kept TR Baalu out of the council of ministers.
Among those who got calls — much to their relief — were fomer Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, former Himachal Pradesh chief minister Virbhadra Singh (both got Cabinet rank); former minister of state in the Prime Minister’s Office, Prithviraj Chavan; former minister of state for commerce Jairam Ramesh (both promoted from ministers of state to holding independent charges); former MoS for urban development Ajay Maken; former MoS for HRD D Purandareswari; former MoS for defence MM Pallamraju (all three have stayed where they were, at MoS rank); and newly elected MP from Orissa, Srikanta Jena. This apart, there has been a large complement of new ministers from Kerala: former MoS for external affairs E Ahamed; former Cabinet minister in charge of Overseas Indians and Parliamentary Affairs, Vayalar Ravi; newly elected MP Shashi Tharoor; as well as MPs Mullapally Ramachandran and KV Thomas.
Former Karnataka Congress unit president Mallikarjun Kharge, an influential leader from the Scheduled Caste community, has been included in the Cabinet.
This Cabinet, therefore, corrects a historical wrong: the 2004 Council of Ministers had just one MoS from Kerala — E Ahamed in the Ministry of External Affairs, that too from the Muslim League. The two Cabinet ministers from the Congress — AK Antony and Vayalar Ravi — were both from the Rajya Sabha. In 2004, the Congress got no Lok Sabha seat from that state. This time, out of 20 seats from Kerala, the party has won 13 on its own with allies — Muslim League and Kerala Congress (Mani) group — winning three. As Assembly elections in Kerala are due in 2011 along with West Bengal, the Congress reckons it is important to bone up from the state as the first step in dislodging the CPI(M) from power.
In West Bengal, the main emphasis of the Congress was on providing a big team, comprising mostly its largest ally, the Trinamool Congress, for MoS slots. The party is focusing on offering visibility of alternatives to those voters who are critical of the Left Front. Accordingly, six MPs — Sisir Adhikari, Saugata Roy, Sultan Ahmad, Mohan Jatua, Dinesh Trivedi and Mukul Ray — have been made MoS.
The complex nature of the ministry-making exercise — compulsions of region, gender and the inclusion of young blood — has delayed the effort and offended those Cabinet ministers who were not part of the Group of 20, or the ‘G20’ as the first lot of ministers are being derisively called.
Meanwhile, the PM contacted those who were dropped — like Bhardwaj and Singh; and former home minister Shivraj Patil who was dropped earlier —and told they would be accommodated suitably elsewhere. Gubernatorial appointments are in the offing.
But elsewhere, anxiety was in plain sight. Delhi MP Ajay Maken’s office was busy all day trying to ascertain whether Krishna Tirath, another MP from Delhi, had indeed got Cabinet rank, while Maken was stuck with the rank of MoS.
Both Maken and Tirath are considered to be detractors of Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit. On the other hand, Dikshit’s son Sandeep, who won by the highest margin from any of the constituencies in Delhi, does not figure in the list of ministers.
There is disproportionate representation from Karnataka. Maharashtra has contributed as many as eight ministers, possibly with an eye on the Assembly elections due later this year.
Mallikarjun Kharge, just back from Bodh Gaya (he is a neo-Buddhist) was incommunicado all day much to the despair of the PMO and the Congress president’s office — he picked up his phone only when he was sure he’d got a Cabinet berth.
