Himalayan News Service

New Delhi, February 18:

A cabinet reshuffle scheduled for this week has been put off after the Election Commission suggested that it be deferred, highly placed sources said. The poll body suggested to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the cabinet reshuffle, which was to take place this week, be postponed until after the assembly polls, the sources told this correspondent. The last phase of the three-phase assembly polls in Bihar and Jharkhand ends on February 23.

Manmohan Singh was expected to induct former petroleum minister Satish Sharma, Tamil Nadu party unit president GK Vasan and late Congress leader Madhavrao Scindia’s son Jyotiraditya Scindia into his eight-month-old council of ministers. Some junior ministers perceived as inefficient were expected to be dropped. Sharma, a close family friend of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, had been kept out of the cabinet until now as there were corruption charges pending against him in courts dating back to the time when he was minister in the government of prime minister PV Narasimha Rao in the 1990s.

His induction was expected since the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) withdrew the charges against him, apparently for lack of evidence. While Vasan’s induction is expected to infuse a new life into the Congress party in Tamil Nadu, Scindia is seen as the representative of the brigade of young MPs in the party who won in the last election. Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, who met Gandhi Wednesday, asked her to give his state more representation in the ministerial council. Chandy pointed out that the state party unit did not have any representation in the central cabinet.

The state is to have elections next year. Kerala, though a Congress-ruled state, could not send a single party MP to the Lok Sabha. The only representation the state has in the government is Minister of State for External Affairs E Ahamed of the Indian Union Muslim League, a constituent of the Congress-led ruling coalition in the state.