AMIT AGNIHOTRI
NEW DELHI, Nov. 2: Congress president Sonia Gandhi set the ball rolling on Monday by asking senior party leaders to start discussing Cabinet formation with Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
Following the directive from Congress president, her political secretary Ahmed Patel and minister of state in the PMO Prithviraj Chavan, in-charge of Haryana, held a series of meetings with Hooda to shortlist names for ministerial berths.
The CM, who has been camping in the city after proving his majority on the floor of the House on October 28, will leave for state capital Chandigarh on Tuesday to receive Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the UT. The second round of discussion on Cabinet formation is likely to begin on Wednesday, said sources.
Sources further said it could be small Cabinet to begin with and an expansion may be undertaken later on to take care of the pulls and pressures from the various groups in the Haryana Congress.
The Congress will appraise the aspirants for Cabinet posts very carefully as it doesn’t want any slippages in Haryana over the next five years.
Mr Hooda’s new Cabinet, which has been mandated to run the government for the next five years despite a drop of 27 seats in the Assembly polls, will have to be a highly effective one given the defeat of five ministers in the previous government, said sources.
With former agriculture minister Harmohinder Singh Chatha becoming the Speaker, the other former ministers who may be repeated keeping in mind the interests of various groups are Savitri Jindal, Randeep Singh Surjewala, Kiran Chaudhary and Ajay Singh Yadav.
The Congress central leadership is also weighing the option of giving ministerial posts to one or two of the seven independents, who supported the Hooda government unconditionally during the October 28 trust vote. The Congress is also trying to evolve a formula to strike a deal with Bhajan Lal’s Haryana Janhit Congress, whose six MLAs, helped the party by abstaining during the motion of confidence in the Haryana Assembly.
Keeping in mind the 10 per cent Brahmin votes in the state, the Congress will also have to have a minister from the community to appeal to the non-Jat segment.
