A large Cabinet reshuffle is being planned but like others before it, this one too might peter out because of pressures and pulls within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The reshuffle is being planned in the first week of February before the Budget session. Farooq Abdullah is to be inducted in the Cabinet to replace Omar Abdullah though government sources say the Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is in no hurry to do this.
Omar had resigned from the central government to move to Kashmir before the elections and his resignation was kept in cold storage for a long time.
The National Conference has no representative in the government though it is member of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
Mamata Banerjee has been out of the NDA and if the Trinamool Congress is to get its act together in time for the next general elections, it is imperative that she come back into the NDA now.
It is not without significance that NDA convenor George Fernandes recently addressed a public meeting from a platform he shared with the Trinamool Congress, despite the disapproval of his own party colleague Nitish Kumar.
But these are the least contentious of the proposed additions to the government. Party spin doctors are giving out that the Muslim face of the NDA might change with party general secretary Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi replacing Civil Aviation Minister Shahnawaz Husain.
Urban Development Minister Anant Kumar is likely to be replaced by Labour Minister Sahib Singh Verma. Shatrughan Sinha could find himself in a less taxing ministry.
And most controversial of all, Information and Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swaraj might find herself in the health and family welfare ministry, losing out to Telecommunication Minister Pramod Mahajan who could be a beneficiary of the new merged ministry of telecommunication and information and broadcasting ministries.
There is the other problem of the two ministers - Vasundhara Raje and Raman Singh - who are currently in violation of the
