By Anirudh Prakash
As power corridors are abuzz with talk of a cabinet reshuffle. All eyes are on prime minister Manmohan Singh as he is gearing up for a major cabinet reshuffle next month. While the talk of the town is whether or not Congress scion Rahul Gandhi will join his council of ministers, questions are also being asked whether the PM will be able to axe the non- performing assets in his cabinet and induct young faces to give a new energy to the government. There are more than a dozen under- performing ministers, belonging to the Congress as well as its alliance partners.
Some of them have nothing much to show as their achievements except landing the government and their parties in an embarrassing situation every now and then with their ludicrous comments. Union steel minister Beni Prasad Verma and coal minister Sriprakash Jaiswal belong to this category of luminaries suffering from the foot- in- mouth disease.
The prime minister may be able to shuffle or drop a few such ministers belonging to the Congress, party chief Sonia Gandhi permitting, while some others might get saved because of political considerations. But the PM’s hands would be tied as far as the allies are concerned because leaders like Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress and M. Karunanidhi of the DMK choose their own candidates.
Among those who are looking certain to be stripped of their portfolio is Verma, a Samajwadi Party turncoat who joined the Congress a few years ago. He was given out- of turn promotion to woo his Kurmi caste on the eve of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.
But he has proved to be a liability with his repeated gaffes.
Holding a key portfolio like steel, which the PM considers an important infrastructure ministry, Verma is a motormouth. He is sure to lose his job in the next shuffle.
S.M. Krishna the 81- year- old external affairs minister is known to commit gaffes, which have embarrassed India on international platforms. He is lacklustre in Parliament. But the grapevine has it that the PM doesn’t want a strong person in the MEA.
Mukul Wasnik the social justice and empowerment minister has hardly made any impact. The PM had to recently assure SC/ ST MPs that he would call an all- party meeting on quota in job promotions. Wasnik hasn’t been able to push for reservation in the private sector either,
The shipping minister G.K. Vasan is highly indecisive. He was too scared to clear senior- level appointments such as the Port Trust of India chairman. In some cases, PM had to intervene to clear appointments. Vasan is said to be more keen to head Tamil Nadu Congress.
Sriprakash Jaiswal as coal minister, he is as lacklustre as he was as MoS for home when he competed with then Cabinet minister Shivraj Patil. A day after 2008 Delhi bomb blasts, he was in Kanpur cutting ribbon at a function.
Apart from the Bill on sexual offences against children and another on sexual harassment at workplace, little work seems to have happened on other key legislations or schemes. The woman and child development minister Krishna Tirath’s report card is not impressive.
Mukul Wasnik, Krishna Tirath and Malliarjun Kharge may not be excellent performers in their respective ministries but they may not be dropped as their Dalit tag cannot be ignored keeping in view the electoral advantage of identity politics. It remains to be seen whether the PM will be able to drop any tainted ministers in the wake of the anti graft crusaders’ allegation that 14 of his cabinet colleagues are corrupt.
Some senior ministers such as A.K. Antony, Ambika Soni, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Veerappa Moily, Salman Khurshid, Jairam Ramesh, Jayanthi Natarajan, Mukul Wasnik, G.K. Vasan, Kamal Nath and C.P. Joshi could be assigned to take up organisational work. Sonia, who is also gearing up to affect a shake up in the party, and the PM are expected to synchronise the government- party revamp.
As the PM has been delaying the reshuffle due to various reasons for the past many months, a number of slots are now given to ministers as additional charges. The burden of many ministers holding two and more portfolios can also be lessened. Vayalar Ravi, Veerappa Moily, Kapil Sibal, Anand Sharma, Pawan Kumar Banal, V. Kishore Chandradeo, V. Narayanasamy, Srikant Jena, Kumari Selja and Kumar Ghatowar are among the ministers who are in-charge of more than one portfolio. Some of the load of such overworked ministers may be taken off. Ashwani Kumar was earlier stripped of parliamentary affairs portfolio for his poor show. Currently minister of state for planning as well as science and technology, he has been overshadowed by his bosses, Montek Singh Ahuluwalia and late Vilasrao Deshmukh. Srikant Jena the minister of state for chemicals and fertilizers also holds the additional charge of statistics and programme implementation. But his portfolio could be changed as he is unhappy working under M. K. Alagiri, who is junior to Jena.
Salman Khurshid’s primary portfolio is law and justice but he also has minority affairs; of late some Muslim organisations and a section of the Congress, unhappy with his handling of minority affairs, want this portfolio to be taken away. Anand Sharma’s original portfolio is commerce and industry. He was given additional charge of textiles after DMK’s Dayanidhi Maran was forced to quit over allegations of his involvement in the Aircel- Maxis deal.
But the PM may be hamstrung in undertaking a complete shake up so as to provide a clean and efficient ministry due to a host of factors. The compulsions of coalition politics may not let him drop non- performing ministers like M.K. Alagiri of the DMK, Mukul Roy of the Trinamool Congress and Praful Patel of the NCP, to name a few. Mukul Roy was elevated as a cabinet minister solely due to his loyalty to his boss, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee. Though he is in- charge of a key ministry like the railways, he spends most of his time in Kolkata and often skips Cabinet meetings. Agatha Sangma
the minister of state for rural development has hardly made any mark working under a high- profile Cabinet minister like Jairam Ramesh. Her campaign for Papa P. A. Sangma in the presidential election did not go down well even with her own party, the NCP. M. K. Alagiri the minister for chemicals and fertilizers is proficient in neither English nor Hindi. So he is unable to intervene effectively in cabinet meetings and never answers a question Parliament. But being DMK chief M. Karunanidhi’s son, he is safe. S. S. Palanimanickam the performance of minister of state for finance has been lacklustre, to say the least. The grapevine has it that even his party boss Karunanidhi is now miffed with him. That could see him being dumped in favour of another DMK leader. PM was forced to shift the NCP leader Praful Patel from civil aviation to heavy industries in the last reshuffle as he failed to stem the rot in Air India. Patel is not very happy with his current portfolio.
Whether the PM elevates him to placate a sulking NCP has to be seen.
The impending rejig is widely expected to be the last major exercise of UPA- II ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls in a bid to address governance issues and bridge the image deficit in the wake of a string of scams. INAV