BJP allies fear delay will deny them Cabinet berths
George Iype in New Delhi
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's decision to defer the expansion of the Union Cabinet has considerably upset his coalition partners as well as some senior Bharatiya Janata Party leaders who were hoping to secure ministerial berths.
BJP leaders claimed on Friday that the prime minister shelved the plan to add more ministers to his council because he was unable to cope with the mounting pressure from ambitious allies who had set their eyes on premier ministries.
They accused key allies like the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Akali Dal of driving a hard bargain, thereby derailing the expansion.
But the allies said Vajpayee was forced to torpedo the plan because the party failed to finalise its own list of ministerial candidates owing to sharp differences of opinion amongst its leaders.
Differing openly with the BJP, Samata Party president and Defence Minister George Fernandes, a pillar of the coalition and one of Vajpayee's principal trouble-shooters, said it was unfair to blame the allies for the postponement.
Fernandes, who is the defence minister, was speaking to reporters after the tea party hosted by AIADMK supremo Jayalalitha Jayaram at a five-star hotel in New Delhi. All the allies barring the Marumalarchi DMK turned up at the party.
A section of BJP leaders led by high-flying Rajya Sabha MP Pramod Mahajan is said to have demanded a reshuffle of the council of ministers along with the expansion.
Party sources said the reshuffle was meant to ensure that Mahajan and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Jaswant Singh, believed to be close to the prime minister, get key ministries. While Mahajan, who was earlier the prime minister's political adviser, was keen to secure the industry ministry by moving out Sikander Bakht, Singh wanted to be finance minister in place of Yashwant Sinha.
But this was opposed by BJP president Shashikant 'Kushabhau' Thakre and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh who did not want to replace Sinha with Singh and promote Mahajan to a prominent ministry.
Sources said the prime minister, who is reportedly unhappy with Sinha's management of the economy in the past six months, did not want to precipitate a crisis within the party by shifting him to make room for Singh.
Even when the prime minister finalised his Cabinet in April, there was a tug of war between 'the Vajpayee group' in the party and the RSS leadership for the finance minister's post. Vajpayee's plan to appoint Singh as finance minister was shot down by the RSS bosses.
But BJP leaders denied that Vajpayee was being pressurised to reshuffle his Cabinet. "The Cabinet expansion was put off because the prime minister's consultations with the alliance partners were inconclusive," BJP vice-president Jai Prakash Mathur told Rediff On The NeT.
This was corroborated by Fernandes who said the prime minister wanted to have wider consultations before embarking on the exercise. Another reason for postponing the exercise was that some leaders of the coalition were not in the country, he said.
BJP leaders also claimed that the postponement would give the prime minister enough time to persuade the Trinamool Congress and the Telugu Desam Party to join the government.
As the BJP leadership thinks the complexion of the Vajpayee coalition might change after the forthcoming assembly election, many believe expansion of the Cabinet would be a sensible idea only after the polls.
But the allies are unhappy. Biju Janata Dal leader and Minister of State for Coal Dilip Ray said the expansion was necessary to fill up vacancies in some of the crucial ministries.
"It is the prime minister's prerogative to carry out the exercise as and when he thinks it fit. But by deferring the expansion, many ministries will remain without proper heads," he said.
"The sad thing is that it gets interpreted that the creation of a full-fledged ministry is the need of alliance partners in a coalition," Ray added.
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