Chautala inducts Bansi men in surprise move

CHANDIGARH, NOV 7: Two Cabinet ministers were dropped on Saturday while Chief Minister Om Parkash Chautala sprang another surprise by ind...

CHANDIGARH, NOV 7: Two Cabinet ministers were dropped on Saturday while Chief Minister Om Parkash Chautala sprang another surprise by inducting three sitting MLAs of the Bansi Lal-led Haryana Vikas Party (HVP) into his Cabinet. Ten MLAs were inducted into the Chautala cabinet on Saturday, and incidentally, all of them happened to have been elected on the Haryana Vikas Party ticket.

The Diwali eve exercise seems to have been aimed at two things; one to satisfy the murmurs of discontent among some former HVP MLAs who had joined Chautala and had not been accommodated in the ministry, and second to signal that the Chautala government had now managed a majority of his own. That the swearing-in of the three MLAs could invoke the provisions of the Anti-Defection Act did not seem to bother Chautala, who sought to brush it aside by saying that the decision rested with the Speaker and not with him.

Immediately after the expansion, the CM decided to drop Brij Mohan Singla and Rao Narbir Singh from his Cabinet. BothSingla and Narbir were prominent dissidents of the Bansi Lal government and were responsible for the downfall of the Bansi Lal government. Those inducted as Cabinet ministers include Jaswant Singh, O P Mahajan and Jagdish Yadav. Yadav is a Haryana Vikas Party member. Those appointed as ministers of state include Subash Chaudhry, Kanta Devi, Vinod Marriya, Azad Mohammed, Ram Swaroop Rama, Jagdish Nayyar and Ram Bhaj.

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Narinder Sharma could not join the cabinet as he could not be informed in time. Subash Chander and Ram Swaroop Rama are HVP members. The government now has 21 Cabinet ministers, out of which only three happen to be original Lok Dal MLAs. The rest have joined his party later.

The day’s exercise resulted in rewarding dissidents and defectors while ignoring party men from the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD). No one who was originally from the Chautala-led INLD was inducted into the cabinet on Saturday. The BJP which has been supporting the INLD stayed away from the swearing-inceremony.

Later, Chautala stated that the three HVP MLAs had severed ties with their parent party, but had not joined his party. When reminded that two of his former colleagues Charan Dass Shorewala and Vinod Kumar Marriya had joined Bansi Lal and their act was challenged by Chautala himself in the High Court, Chautala responded by stating that this was not within his purview but fell in the jurisdiction of the Speaker.

The Chautala ministry in now strong. His response was typical: "I have full faith in all the 22 MLAs of my party", prompting media persons to inquire whether he did not have faith in the rest. Chautala, however, remained silent on this question.

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The dropping of the two ministers implies that none of the four heavyweights, who originally were responsible in pulling down the Bansi Lal government, have not been favoured by Chautala. Jagan Nath has since then joined the Congress, while Karan Singh Dalal has joined the BJP. Singla and Narbir have now been dropped.