Even as the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), the second largest ally of the ruling Congress party, accepted the terms set by Congress president Sonia Gandhi for its entry in Manmohan Singh’s Council of Ministers, there was no clarity about the expansion of the Cabinet till Monday night.
According to sources, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will hold another round of discussion with the Congress brass about distributing of Ministers of State (MoS) portfolios on Tuesday. Only after this internal discussion of the Congress, the schedule of Cabinet expansion will be decided.
A section of the Congress even said that expansion of the Cabinet and inclusion of the MoS may get delayed till Wednesday.
While the PM wanted to hit the ground running, these compulsions of coalition politics seem to be putting brakes on the pace of governance.
According to sources in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), Singh has already informed ministers that key infrastructure portfolios like power or surface transport will have to come out with quarterly reports and hold press conferences to reveal how much work has been done.
“This move is envisaged both to ensure more accountability and to show to voters that the government means business,” said a PMO source.
At the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) meeting last week, soon after he was formally elected as the prime ministerial candidate of the party, Singh announced that all ministries would be given time-bound targets. “I will ask every minister to set time-bound targets for implementation of our election promises and the various programmes and policies of each ministry. We will undertake quarterly review of programme implementation by each ministry,” PM said at the CPP meet.
But nine days after its record victory, the Congress is yet to set the government in order. Ministers who have been sworn in but are waiting for the allotment of portfolios; and aspirants who missed the first round of recruitment are equally anxious. The tussle over power-sharing with the DMK, which has 18 seats, has already forced Singh and Sonia Gandhi to delay announcement of most of the portfolios.
Though Pranab Mukherjee, P Chidambaram, A K Antony and Sharad Pawar resumed office today in a new government, C P Joshi, Sushilkumar Shinde and M Veerappa Moily are sitting at home, yet to get their new addresses.
Joshi is tipped to become the next rural development minister and a section of the Congress claims that he might have to handle the panchayati raj portfolio as well. But on Monday the rural development minister’s office wore a deserted look, as it waited for the new minister.
Similarly, power, surface transport and shipping ministries are awaiting their new ministers, even as these sectors need attention on a priority basis.
Though Mamata Banerjee, chief of the Trinamool Congress — the biggest ally of the Congress party with 19 seats — has managed to get the railway ministry, she has not assumed office yet. Soon after she took oath as the minister, Banerjee went back to Kolkata, where she is busy monitoring the cyclone situation in the state.
After arriving at Kolkata, the Trinamool supremo also made it clear that she would be available in Kolkata to tackle the Left for the larger part of the month in the future.
Congress sources are, however, confident that these initials hiccups will soon be resolved and the new UPA regime will run full steam ahead.
