Junior ministers gang up to demand work

NEW DELHI, Nov 24: At least 15 Ministers of State, unhappy at being given negligible work by their Cabinet Ministers, on Thursday authoris...

NEW DELHI, Nov 24: At least 15 Ministers of State, unhappy at being given negligible work by their Cabinet Ministers, on Thursday authorised the MoS (Finance) Balasaheb Vikhe Patil, to convey their sentments to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and seek redressal of their problems.

Though all the 40-odd MoSs belonging to the BJP and allied parties, had been invited to the dinner meeting held at Gurudwara Rakabganj Road residence of MoS for Human Resource Development, Sumitra Mahajan, only 14 BJP Ministers turned up, besides of course, Patil, a Shiv Sena MP.

“Two non-BJP Ministers, Ajit Panja (Trinamool Congress) and E Ponnuswami (DMK) rang me up to excuse themselves from attending the meeting on different pretexts”, Mahajan told The Indian Express

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The only topic discussed by MoSs at the meeting, according to a participant, was their idleness and how even bureaucrats of their departments had been ignoring them at the behest of their respective Cabinet Ministers.

“Some of us have been elected to Lok Sabha more than three-four terms and it is a pity to find people much junior to us, lording over us as Cabinet Ministers”, said an MoS.

Mahajan however, said that it was only a social get-together, allowing MoSs a chance to meet each other. “We were surprised to find that some of us did not even know each other,” she said.

Some of the participants however, said on condition of anonymity that they had decided to form a pressure group so as to make the Prime Minister aware of their problems. Some of them had already met once at Jaisinghrao Gaekwad Patil’s residence two days ago.

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They also decided to meet at Vallabhbhai Katheria’s residence next week to review impact of their Thursday meeting and analyse the result of Vikhe Patil’s meeting with Vajpayee, one of them said.

MoS Surface Transport, Hukum Deo Narain Yadav, it may be recalled, had told this paper that he did not have as much work as done by a clerk. “I come to office daily, meet some vistors, write two-three recommendation letters and go home”, is what he had said. Yadav, who has held Cabinet Minister rank in 1991, was however conspicuous due to his absence on Thursday.

Those attending the meeting were Tapan Sikdar (Communications), Shahnawaz Hussain (HRD), Rita Varma, P Radhakrishnan, Bandaru Dattatreya (Urban Development), Sriram Chauhan (Consumer Affairs), Ramesh Bains (Information and Broadcasting), Sripad Naik (Agriculture), Jaisinghrao Gaekwad Patil (Mines), Phaggan Singh Kulaste (Tribal Affairs), Chaman Lal Gupta (Civil Aviation), Vallabh Bhai Katheria (Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises), Balasaheb Vikhe Patil (Finance) besides of course Mahajan herself. All belong to the BJP.

Mahajan’s house had been decorated with flower arches, lights as the invited Ministers were given a red carpet welcome. The meeting was held in complete secrecy and no outsider was allowed to enter the residence by her security guards.