The Hindu : Jumbo Cabinet, yet jarring notes

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Oct 12, 2002

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Other States - Uttar Pradesh

Jumbo Cabinet, yet jarring notes

By J.P. Shukla

LUCKNOW OCT. 11. The Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Mayawati, today raised the strength of her Council of Ministers to 79 with the induction of 56 more Ministers into her five-month-old team.

Lalloo Singh Chauhan, former BJP Minister of State, did not take the oath despite his name having been included among the Ministers to be sworn in, revealing the first symptoms of resentment brewing in the BJP after the expansion. He was present during the ceremony but reportedly left when he found that some of his juniors had been put on a par with him in the expansion.

Talking to newspersons after the swearing-in ceremony, Ms. Mayawati said that with today's expansion, the ministry-making process was "99 per cent complete". In case a need was felt, "the chances of which were hardly one per cent", there could be minor additions.

Those inducted today include 12 Ministers of Cabinet rank and 16 Ministers of State with independent charge. The other 29 are Ministers of State attached to Cabinet Ministers. The portfolios will be allotted shortly.

Ms. Mayawati said she had maintained a fine balance in her Cabinet with 15 Ministers of Cabinet rank belonging to her own party and an equal number to the BJP and its allies. Among the 20 Ministers of State with independent charge, 10 each belonged to the BSP and the BJP and its allies. The 50 per cent ratio had been maintained among the 28 other Ministers of State, she said.

Ms. Mayawati justified the inclusion of several Ministers with long police records on the ground that "even a bad person was likely to change his ways in good company". She expressed the hope that the controversial Ministers would now be reformed. There would be no cause for resentment either in her own party or the BJP with today's expansion and the stability of her Government would not be threatened in any case, she claimed. But the situation in the BJP appeared to be far from normal. Several senior leaders, including Ganga Bhakt Singh, Harish Chandra Srivastava, Shiva Kant Ojha and Narendra Singh Gaur, were aspiring for ministerial positions but their hopes were belied. All of them are former Ministers and have been associated with the BJP for decades. Their exclusion is likely to create a new phenomenon of dissidence.

Mr. Ganga Bhakt Singh later announced his resignation from the party while supporters of Mr. Chandra Mani Kant Singh, MLA from Bahraich, staged a demonstration at the BJP headquarters here protesting his exclusion.

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Jumbo Cabinet, yet jarring notes