The chaos of change

New Delhi, MARCH 19: Atal Bihari Vajpayee was sworn in Prime Minister this morning along with a 42-member, two-tier ministry. But only a fe...

New Delhi, MARCH 19: Atal Bihari Vajpayee was sworn in Prime Minister this morning along with a 42-member, two-tier ministry. But only a few hours into power, the prime minister was forced to act against his will after a prolonged intra-party wrangling over the Finance portfolio.

Seething over his wish to appoint Jaswant Singh as finance minister being overruled by the RSS, Vajpayee told the media in the morning that he would keep Finance with himself. But he was forced to allot the key ministry to Yashwant Sinha late at night. Last minute bargaining over ministries led to a hitch that delayed the announcement of portfolios (earlier scheduled for the afternoon) until close to midnight. Vajpayee is to keep foreign affairs for himself. Only 21 Cabinet portfolios were announced, the portfolios of the 21 ministers of state are to be released tomorrow — a pointer to the difficulties being faced in the allocation of ministries.

The list itself was reportedly sent to Rashtrapati Bhavan after 10 pm for the president’s signature after which a communique was issued. This is the first embarrassment for the fledgling government and does not augur well for the future. Sources said that the problem was largely within the BJP, rather than its allies. It was speculated that among those who were insisting on ‘‘better’’ ministries was Murli Manohar Joshi, who reportedly thought that his stature reserved better ministries than HRD and Science and Technology.

AIADMK chief Jayalalithaa has clearly got what she wanted. M. Thambi Durai is to be cabinet minister for Law and Justice, while R. Kumar is expected to be minister of state for finance. Both are perceived to be important for her alleged hidden agenda — soft-pedalling on the corruption cases against her and investigations into the Indian Bank scam in which rivals TMC are allegedly involved…

Excerpted from the ‘Indian Express’ report of March 20, 1998