PM promises governorships, other high posts to dropped ministers, sulking leaders.
Prime minister Manmohan Singh’s placatory phone call to some of his senior colleagues, such as Arjun Singh, HR Bhardwaj and Shivraj Patil who have been left out of the government, is in keeping with his image of a decent and dignified man. But it has done little to douse the heartburn among those who failed to make the grade.
Sources in the government confirmed that “PM Manmohan Singh spoke to all dropped ministers and assured each one that they would be accommodated in the system either with gubernatorial tenures or in other government departments, task forces or even the party organisation.”
Veterans such as Arjun Singh, Bhardwaj and Shivraj Patil bore their disappointment stoically, while some others appeared aggrieved, especially leaders such as Girija Vyas, Seesram Ola, Srikant Jena, Salman Khursheed and Beni Prasad Verma. The reason for Girija Vyas’s unhappiness is the induction of first-time MP CP Joshi into the cabinet at her expense, while Jena was peeved at being demoted. He was a cabinet minister in the Deve Gowda government but has now been slotted in as a minister of state without independent charge.
There is also a considerable amount of heartburn amongst the MPs from UP. For a state that has elected 21 Congress MP’, incidentally the party’s best showing since 1984, there is not one cabinet minister from the state.
It’s not as if all those who have been elected from UP are first timers. Salman Khursheed was a minister in the PV Narasimha Rao government, Beni Prasad Verma was a seven-time MLA in UP, he was a cabinet minister in the Deve Gowda government bust has been ignored.
Apart from the inadequate representation to the UP, questions are also being asked about the absence of a single member belonging to the minority community from the Hindi heartland in the union cabinet.
“This is truly amazing. The minorities voted wholeheartedly for the Congress, yet there is nobody from the mainland in the Union cabinet’’ says a Muslim MP. There are two Muslim ministers in the cabinet — Ghulamnabi Azad and Farooq Abdullah — which has not gone down well with the MPs from the Hindi heartland.
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