Gujarat Ministry: old wine in a new bottle?

By Manas Dasgupta

GANDHINAGAR, OCT. 17. The Gujarat Chief Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi, expanded his 10-member Ministry today by inducting 29 more Ministers. All but two of them were sworn in as Ministers of State rank.

It will be a two-tier Ministry with 12 Cabinet Ministers - including the Chief Minister - and 27 Ministers of State. Mr. Modi has promoted most Deputy Ministers of the Keshubhai Patel Government to the State rank.

Mr. Modi, however, has disappointed most of those who hoped to see a change in his style of functioning and in the choice of his team. Not only has he belied the expectation of a small team, (his 39-member Ministry, in fact, is bigger than the 37-member Ministry of his predecessor, Mr. Keshubhai Patel), he has also taken back many from the Patel Ministry. And the re-induction of some controversial names will certainly not help Mr. Modi to refurbish the ruling party's image.

While he has retained 24 Ministers from the Patel Cabinet, dropping only 12, he has also included 14 new faces giving more weightage to the powerful Patels, who had 10 Ministers, including the Chief Minister, in the previous Cabinet but will now have 12. The number of representatives of the socially and economically backward classes, to which Mr. Modi himself belongs, has also gone up from 11 to 14, and there is a drastic reduction in the number of those representing the upper castes.

Mr. Ashok Bhatt, who had resigned from the Patel Cabinet in the wake of a court chargesheeting the Union Minister of State for Defence, Mr. Harin Pathak, in 1985, has returned, despite strong objections from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. And the re- induction of Mr. Purshottam Solanki, who was named by the Srikrishna Commission for his alleged role in the Mumbai communal riots, has also surprised many.

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Section  : Other States
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