Singh may expand Cabinet soon

New Delhi Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is expected to expand his council of ministers later this month.

Besides including some new ministers, Singh may also reshuffle portfolios of some ministers.

This could be the last such exercise considering the next general elections are barely nine months away.

According to Congress party sources, the matter came up for discussion when Singh and other senior leaders assembled at party chief Sonia Gandhi's residence on Wednesday following the government's victory in the trust vote.

The exercise will mainly be aimed at accommodating one or two members of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, a promise doled out to them before the trust vote in order to secure their support.

JMM chief Shibu Soren is all set to return as the minister for coal, while one of the remaining four JMM lawmakers may become a junior minister.

Assigned quota

It is not yet clear if the long-speculated induction of the Tamil Nadu chief minister M. Karunanidhi's daughter Kanimozhi as a federal minister will materialise this time, considering that the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam is yet to take up one ministerial berth from its assigned quota that became vacant after Dayanidhi Maran stepped down in May last year.

Prime Minister Singh, however, faces a problem. He already has 79 ministers in his government and may have to drop a couple of ministers to accommodate Soren and others. The constitution puts a cap of maximum 10 per cent of the Parliament's total strength on the size of the council of ministers.

The combined strength of both Houses of Parliament is 790, which means the size of the council of ministers cannot be more than 79, besides the prime minister himself.

Congress party sources say that there is a possibility that some of the ministers, who also hold posts in the party, may have to make room for the new entrants. Shakeel Ahmad, Prithviraj Chavan and Ajay Maken hold dual posts.

Sources, however, did not rule out the possibility of all of them retaining their twin posts and some of the non-performing ministers from the Congress party's quota being dropped.

The prime minister himself looks after six ministries, including the Ministry of Coal and the Ministry of Environment and Forest, which in the past were held by the JMM and the DMK respectively.

Soren is all set to return to head the Ministry of Coal for the third time since the Congress party-led United Progressive Alliance came to power in May 2004. However, his wish to be made the Minister for Coal and Mines may be fulfilled only partly. While he was the minister in-charge of both from May 2004 to July 2004, he got back just the coals when he returned as a minister in January 2006. He has been in political wilderness since he was forced to step down in November the same year after his arrest in a criminal case.