The country’s new home minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, today said he prefers a Congressman as his successor in the finance ministry, setting off speculation about the implication of his statement.
Former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor and an independent member of the Rajya Sabha, C Rangarajan, and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia were seen as the front runners for the hot seat with Chidambaram moving to the home ministry. However, both of them are not Congress party members.
“I would like to have a Congress finance minister, who is qualified to take India to a high growth trajectory,” said Chidambaram in his last interaction with reporters as finance minister.
When asked about this statement, Congress spokesperson Manish Tiwari said, “This portfolio has been held by the Congress party. What Chidambaram really meant was that this tradition of Congress holding the portfolio should continue. The person (referring to new minister) should be an appointee of the party.”
At the same time, the outgoing finance minister was all praise for the prime minister — who will hold additional charge of the finance ministry — saying “in a difficult year what we need is close coordination between the Planning Commission, the Ministry of Finance and the RBI. So in a sense he is the only person in India who has held all these three posts at some time or other”.
In the last two decades, PM Manmohan Singh had served as finance minister, deputy chairman of the planning commission and governor of the RBI.
Chidambaram said he was initially disinclined to take the home minister’s job, but he “answered the call of duty” after Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Singh took a decision in this regard.
With GDP growth for the first half of the current fiscal (2008-09) at 7.8 per cent, Chidambaram was looking forward to a second half growth rate that will keep the annual growth rate between 7 and 8 per cent.
Chidambaram said additional funding to India from the World Bank and its private lending arm, the International Finance Corporation, is likely to materialise by March next year.
