Onboard PM’s Special Aircraft: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday indicated that a Cabinet reshuffle could be on the cards to fill up the vacancies.
“There are some vacancies. The issue of filling them up is being considered,” Singh told reporters on his way back from Japan and Thailand.
The Prime Minister was asked whether he was contemplating a Cabinet reshuffle in view of vacancies created by the resignations of P K Bansal and Ashwani Kumar. Bansal quit as Railways Minister earlier this month in the wake of bribery scandal involving his nephew and a Railway Board member.
Kumar also resigned as Law Minister following controversy over vetting of a CBI probe report on coal block allocation scam.
The portfolio of Railways has been given to Road and Highways Minister C P Joshi as an additional charge while that of Law has gone to Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal as additional ministry.
Besides, there are a number of other ministers holding more than one portfolios.
The Prime Minister, while interacting with the mediapersons on board the special aircraft, also rejected reports of a rift between him and Congress President Sonia Gandhi, asserting that there was no truth in it as the two worked together almost on all issues. “In all truthfulness, there is no difference of opinion between me and the Congress president,” he said.
“This perception that on certain issues there were differences of opinion, there is no truth in that… We work together on almost every issue and where consultations are needed, I consult the Congress president,” he said while responding to a question about perception of a trust deficit and divergences between him and Gandhi.
He was also asked whether Gandhi had nudged him against his wishes to get the resignation of Ashwani Kumar and whether he faced a tough situation when CBI Director Ranjit Sinha named a joint secretary in the PMO as having made changes in the agency’s affidavit to the Supreme Court on Coalgate. The Prime Minister did not spell out his response to this.
India hopeful of inking civil nuclear deal with Japan: Dr Singh expressed confidence that India will soon conclude a civil nuclear deal with Japan that will allow Tokyo to export nuclear reactors to the country.
“There have been discussions with Japan and this visit marked a formal move in that direction. I am hopeful that before long we will be able to put our signatures to a civil nuclear energy agreement with Japan as well,” Dr Singh said.
A joint statement issued at the end of exhaustive talks between Singh and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe this week had said the two leaders reaffirmed the importance of civil nuclear cooperation between the two countries, while recognising that nuclear safety is a priority for both governments.
“In this context, they directed their officials to accelerate the negotiations of an Agreement for Cooperation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy towards an early conclusion,” the statement had said.
Negotiations for the bilateral civil nuclear cooperation agreement have not made much headway since Japan was struck by Fukushima nuclear disaster in March, 2011. Answering questions on progress made so far in India’s Look East policy, Singh said, “I am hopeful that Look East policy of India is paying rich dividends and the results are going to improve as we move forward”.
“The Look East policy of the Government of India is not a new development. When Mr Narsimha Rao was our Prime Minister, and I was the Finance Minister, we charted out a course of action to get closer to South East Asian countries particularly ASEAN,” the Prime Minister said.
“We have, for example, the dedicated freight corridor where Japan is helping us; we have Mumbai-Delhi industrial corridor where also the Japanese help will be made available and also the Mumbai-Bangalore corridor where also these is agreed interest of east Asian countries including Japan, Thailand and Malaysia,” Singh said.
The Prime Minister also hoped that India’s Look East policy will benefit the north-east.
“I sincerely hope that the north-eastern states of India will benefit enormously from our Look-East policies,” the Prime Minister said. (PTI)