Berth pangs over, swearing in today

Laloo, Pawar to join govt after day-long wranglings.

Ending uncertainty over the swearing-in of Prime Minister-designate Manmohan Singh and his council of ministers, a Rashtrapati Bhavan communique late tonight said the ceremony would be held at 5.30 pm tomorrow.

Singh is expected to take oath with a 60-member ministry, of which 20 are of Cabinet rank.

After day-long wranglings over berth allocations, both Laloo Prasad Yadav (Rashtriya Janata Dal) and Sharad Pawar (Nationalist Congress Party) came around to the idea of joining the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance.

But Yadav has written to the Congress on how seat-sharing among allies should be "fair".

Yadav had an extensive meeting with Pawar, initially with a view to forming a front within a front, but this joint action did not work.

Publicly Yadav's stance was that every ally in the coalition should get a fair share in the ministry, but he denied reports that he had sought the deputy prime minister's post or wanted the home portfolio for his party.

Soon after his return from Patna, where he had gone yesterday in a huff, Yadav met senior Congress leaders Arjun Singh, RK Dhawan and Kapil Sibal to explain his party's stand.

Senior Congress leaders Pranab Mukherjee and Ahmed Patel held talks with Pawar on government formation but Yadav, who was to be present at the meeting, did not turn up. Later, both Congress and Rashtriya Janata Dal leaders said the problems had been resolved.

Pawar spoke on Yadav's behalf and said he did not want a ministry but a package for Bihar. Yadav denied he was upset. "I am not upset. I am not Mamata Banerjee that I will leave in a huff. I am going to attend the swearing-in ceremony."

However, he said people pointing to the cases against him should realise that former Defence Minister George Fernandes and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa also had cases pending against them.

"My case is only in a trial court and not in the high court," he said.

The subtext of Yadav's campaign was to get a better deal for the allies and pointed to the difficulties the Congress was going to face in the coming days.

As one alliance leader put it "since the strength of the allies and supporting parties is more than the Congress, it is natural that the allies should get more ministries".

Singh held another round of talks with Congress President Sonia Gandhi, the third in two days on ministry-making.

In a related development, the Congress offered the Speaker's post to veteran Communist Party of India (Marxist) MP Somnath Chatterjee, which the party agreed to consider at its politburo meeting.