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| Fingers crossed, ‘ministers in waiting’ wait for next | | |
HAMAAD SALIF
Jammu, May 1: ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ –this is what the ‘Ministers in waiting’ don’t want to be and therefore most of them have rushed to Srinagar to put their face in the election campaign.
This has been perhaps the longest wait ever for expansion of a Ministry in Jammu and Kashmir and the promise is to move some 12 Legislators of the National Conference and the Congress along with some independents to move into Civil Secretariat chambers anything after middle of May.
However, an uncertainty still prevails on the cabinet expansion –will this happen after election results or after the new government is formed in New Delhi. The later proposition appears more convincing as the NC and Congress leadership would want the highly kicked up political dust completely settled down before ticking off names for their inclusion in cabinet.
Omar Abdullah and nine of his Ministers were sworn in on January 5 and the Chief Minister had then said, “this swearing in is just ceremonial as the urgency is my requirement to attend the Chief Ministers’ meeting on internal security the next day in New Delhi. The Cabinet will be expanded after January 10 as first ten days of Muharram are considered inauspicious”. Whether auspicious or inauspicious, the Chief Minister and his nine colleagues made a timely beginning but the wait for the rest is not ending yet.
Four months are already over and there are still no signals of cabinet expansion. The coalition leadership earlier had obvious compulsions in delaying the expansion. Immediately after formation of the Omar Abdullah government earlier this year, the coalition had the challenge of facing elections to vacant seats of Legislative Council and four seats of the Rajya Sabha.
Expanding cabinet before this exercise would have left around two dozen aspirants sulking and an imminent disaster in voting for both elections –Legislative Council and Rajya Sabha. While getting over from arduous exercise was not so easy that the state was faced with Lok Sabha elections delaying cabinet expansion by another couple of months.
Delaying expansion due to Lok Sabha elections had little to do with the Model Code of Conduct but it had more bearing on performance of legislators for the Lok Sabha nominee of their party or the coalition. A large army of disappointed aspirants could have upset the coalition applecart in elections.
Now since only two phases of elections are left, the aspirants are finding the cabinet expansion close by. To put their face before leadership and be there in the good books, most of the legislators aspiring to become Ministers have rushed to Srinagar to campaign for National Conference president Farooq Abdullah who is seeking Lok Sabha elections.
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