Just eleven days after his induction as the Goa Chief Minister, Digamber Kamat has already come under fire for the delay in expanding his Cabinet.
PANAJI: Just eleven days after his induction as the Goa Chief Minister, Digamber Kamat has already come under fire for the delay in expanding his Cabinet. Undecided on portfolio distribution, Kamat has been accused of bringing the administration to a standstill in the state.
With the Cabinet not in place, he has earned criticism from the Opposition, BJP, and his own party members. Since there is no minister, many decisions pertaining to the state administration are yet to be taken, said a BJP spokesman.
Moreover, Kamat’s trip to Delhi on Tuesday to meet Congress leaders and get the approval for the expansion proved to be unfruitful. The newly-inducted CM instead ended up cooling his heels there since he neither could meet AICC general secretary in charge of Goa Margaret Alva nor party president Sonia Gandhi.
With only eight berths out of 12 left to be distributed, Kamat has an uneasy task of fulfilling aspirations of all the coalition members. He had already stated that he would expand the cabinet by mid-this week and even had several suggestions for the eight ministerial posts left.
But out of the 40 MLAs, the two-week old Kamat-led coalition government has not allocated portfolios to any of them as yet. One ministerial aspirant, who has been put on hold for long, told DNA, “By June 22, the cabinet should be in place. But if I don’t find a place in it, I am not going to take it lying down.” Another person who feels she deserves to be in the cabinet is Victoria Fernandes. She has in fact demanded the lucrative Town and Country Planning portfolio on the grounds that she defeated the forces who sold Goa to the building lobby. Fernandes is the only woman MLA in the assembly and has been re-elected four times from Santacruz.
Pandurang Madkaikar, transport minister in the outgoing government, hopes to be back because he is the only ST candidate. So does Manohar Azgaonkar who ditched the BJP to join the Congress just before the elections.
The most difficult task would be to accommodate Vishwajit, son of former CM and current Speaker Pratapsingh Rane.
Vishwajit, who successfully contested Valpoi constituency, had lobbied for Kamat during the elections.
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