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GOVERNMENT Mix 'n' Match Governance By expanding his cabinet, Vajpayee may have attempted to induct fresh talent and contain dissidence but all it has done is lead to mistrust among allies and rumblings within the BJP. By Farzand Ahmed In this season of seamless partying it is a problem that would have put any host in embarrassed perspiration. For Brajesh Mishra, principal secretary to the prime minister, it was a cause for immense worry last week. Barely six weeks ago, when he chalked out the seating arrangement at the Union Government's Cabinet Room in South Block, there were 26 chairs. After the current round of minister and portfolio shuffling-cum expansion, he has had to put three more chairs round the high table of governance. Simply put, Mishra's, and his boss' problem is of accommodating more and more grouchy allies who'd not settle for anything short of a cabinet rank. The problem of seating, however, seems to have been solved with some furniture-lugging. But in its wake have cropped up other knottier problems that Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee will have to grapple with in the days to come. Among them are the mistrust among the BJP's numerous allies in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the severe heartburn within the BJP itself over the sidelining of several senior members. The induction of four more ministers on November 22 -- three of cabinet rank and one minister of state -- makes the Vajpayee cabinet the largest the country has ever had. Its 73 ministers, 28 of whom enjoy cabinet rank, seven ministers of state with independent charge and 38 ministers of state make a mockery of Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha's public resolve to downsize the Government in order to cut administrative costs. A week after the exercise there is still no official word why Vajpayee undertook the exercise at all. But there are conjectures aplenty. Some suggest it was only to accommodate a Bhumihar leader from Bihar to win over the powerful feudal castes four months before the state votes in a new assembly. Others say it was aimed at keeping in good humour the ousted Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh by moving his sworn foe, Rajnath Singh, to Delhi, which would necessarily mean under the party constitution that he steps down from the post of state BJP chief.The only claim that nobody is making is that the reshuffle was undertaken to tone up the administration and inject fresh talent into the council of ministers. To be sure, the exercise seemed Bihar-centric. That is understandable, considering the ruling alliance's eagerness to capture power in the state. But strangely, it was the Janata Dal(U), its alliance partner in the state, which first saw red. "The way the expansion has been conducted leaves us with no option but to watch the BJP's moves closely. It is behaving like the big brother," says party spokesman Mohan Prakash. What he is alluding to is the placement of BJP leaders as ministers of state under cabinet ministers who are invariably drawn from other parties in the NDA. Thus you have the BJP's Hiren Pathak under George Fernandes in the Defence Ministry, Bangaru Laxman, the BJP national vice- president assisting Mamata Banerjee in the Railways Ministry, the Shiv Sena's Suresh Prabhu and Manohar Joshi having to work with Ramesh Bais and Vallav Bhai Kathiriya in Chemicals and Fertilisers and Heavy Industries respectively and Chaman Lal Gupta assisting Sharad Yadav in the Civil Aviation Ministry. The list is of course longer: Ram Vilas Paswan and Tapan Sikdar in communications, Naveen Patnaik and Rita Verma in Mines and Minerals and the DMK's T.R. Balu and Babulal Marandi in Environment and Forests. Resentment naturally is brewing. "This is a typical BJP ploy to not only keep an eye on the senior ministers but to maintain the party's grip over the concerned ministries," griped one non-BJP cabinet minister. Senior BJP leader K.N. Govindacharya denies any such design. "It is nothing more than a coincidence," he insists. The problem, however, is that the alliance partners don't think the line is convincing enough and see it as part of the BJP's attempts to assert its authority. "In the last government, Vajpayee had to deal with ambitious coalition partners. This time he has to reckon with over-ambitious BJP leaders, many of whom have the backing of the RSS," says one JD(U) minister. Consequently, the party has kept exclusively for itself key ministries like Home, Finance, Urban Affairs, Human Resources Development, Power, Information Technology, Tribal Affairs, Water Resources and Tourism with both the cabinet-level ministers and the ministers of state being from the party. The outrage is not limited to the coalition partners. Even within the party, there is muted resentment over the sidelining of senior leaders who they feel ought to have found a place, if not in the Cabinet, at least in the council of ministers. Two names are being mentioned in this context: Shatrughan Sinha, who campaigned tirelessly for the alliance in Bihar, and Vijay Goel, the young MP from Delhi, whose organisational skills could be the envy of veteran parliamentarian. Sinha was apparently left out on grounds that the Bihar contingent in the Cabinet already had another heavyweight Kayastha, Yashwant Sinha. The finance minister is a relative newcomer to the party, having crossed over from Chandra Shekhar's party only in 1994. The other new face from Bihar is of even more recent vintage: C.P. Thakur joined the BJP on the eve of the recent general elections. Besides, there is also resentment that both Delhi and Goa, which sent only BJP MPs to the Lok sabha, have not been rewarded. There's also the BJP women's wing, the Mahila Morcha, to reckon with. Its members are upset that not one woman minister has been elevated to the cabinet rank, though at least three -- Vasundhara Raje, Uma Bharati and Maneka Gandhi -- have been constant features of the Lok Sabha since 1989. The fact that there is one woman cabinet minister from the Trinamool Congress -- Mamata Banerjee -- and six ministers of state from the BJP is, of course, no consolation to them. Nothing speaks more eloquently about the alliance's desire to oust Rabri Devi's Rashtriya Janata Dal regime in Bihar than the special attention that Vajpayee has granted to this crucial state. Two months ago, the BJP-JD(U) alliance surprised itself by shattering Laloo Prasad Yadav's socio-political base and bagging 41 of the 54 seats in the state, with the BJP winning 23 and the JD(U) taking 18. The comprehensive leads the combine had in 191 of the 324 assembly segments have convinced its leadership that given the right incentives, Laloo could be brought to his knees. That perhaps explains why Bihar has more ministers than any other state -- 12 with six holding cabinet status. Four of the cabinet ministers are from the JD(U) which has made no bones about that the fact that in the coming assembly elections, the BJP will have to play the role of junior partner in the state. Significantly, three days before Vajpayee reconstructed his Cabinet, he called the JD(U)'s Nitish Kumar, then surface transport minister, and informed him about his impending transfer. That Kumar is not upset about his transfer to the less glamorous Agriculture Ministry may have something to do with assurances reportedly given to him that this is only a temporary assignment -- to last until the assembly elections in Bihar. Presumably by then, it will be time for another reshuffle. |
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