Cong, NCP agree to prune Cabinet by six

If it was for the first time that the state had a council of ministers as big as 61, it will also be the first time in its history that six of them will now carry the epithet “former ministers without portfolios” as the Congress and the NCP struck a deal today to drop four and two ministers respectively from each party to bring down the strength of the ministry to 55.

In keeping with the deal all the ministers of both the parties whotook oath than ten days ago in two batches, submitted their resignation letters to their respective party heads: Vilasrao and Chhagan Bhujbal.

But though both of them came hugging and beaming out of the meeting to announce all was well, the spectre of trouble was still not gone as the difficult decision of who should be dropped had to be tackled. Vilasrao, happy to let the High Command decide the issue, is scheduled to take off for Delhi on Saturday morning.

“This is the first step towards restoring normalcy in our relations,” Vilasrao Deshmukh told The Indian Express. “Four ministers of the Congress — one of cabinet rank and three ministers of state — and two ministers of state of the NCP, will have to quit. It will be pruned further after seeing their performance during the winter session of the state legislature at Nagpur.”

Deshmukh said of all the 61 resignations, only six would be forwarded to Governor P C Alexander for acceptance. “Once that is done, portfolios will be distributed. Ithink, the entire exercise will be over by Saturday,” Deshmukh pointed out.

During the day the two parties did not make much progress until AICC general secretary Madhavrao Scindia and Congress leader P R Dasmunshi intervened and agreed to the NCP demand of pruning the ministry. But both parties came out of the drama bruised. The Congress for having to face the ignominy of being forced to drop ministers even before they were allotted portfolios and the NCP because it did not in the end get what it wanted.

The NCP was a party to ballooning of the cabinet till its strength reached 58. It took objection only when three more names were added to the list without its permission, particularly, the name of Independent legislator Harshavardhan Patil, arch rival of Sharad Pawar and his nephew Ajit. So the fight was never about the size of the cabinet, it was over Patil’s inclusion. The NCP tried hard to get the Congress to agree to drop Patil but failed because though the Congress agreed to drop four ministers, itwill decide who and Patil will not be one of them.

For public consumption though, the NCP will claim credit for bringing down the ministry from 61 to 55 and clear its conscience of the charges of governmental profligacy. Precisely what Bhujbal did: “For NCP, it is a major victory. The Congress admitted that it was a mistake on its part to add three names to the final list of the cabinet members.” A dead give-away that even when the ministry touched 58, the NCP’s conscience was not stirred.Nevertheless, Bhujbal spoke about the size of his dream cabinet: “I feel the ministry should should be small, not more than 28-30, to curtail additional expenditure. At a juncture when we are facing resource crunch, we should have a very small cabinet. If Congress is prepared to reduce 10 of its cabinet members, we will reduce our members by the same strength,” Bhujbal added.