In an indication that no consensus could be reached on allocation of portfolios to newly appointed ministers in Madhya Pradesh, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan who returned to Bhopal from New Delhi after a two-day extended visit said that allocation will not be done on Tuesday. “I will work out on it and allocation will be done soon,” Chouhan said.
On Sunday, Chouhan had said in Delhi that the portfolio distribution will be undertaken on Monday, once he was back in Bhopal. But the chief minister's tour to Delhi got extended repeatedly—from late Sunday night to Monday morning, then Monday afternoon and Monday night.
Finally, he was back in Bhopal on Tuesday, but seemed to be empty-handed. When the media questioned him whether the allocation will be done by evening, he answered that he will work on it today and allocate departments soon.
Ex-chief minister Kamal Nath took a jibe at the delay, saying in Ujjain that the “[BJP] government was formed through trading, cabinet was constituted through trading and now trading was on for portfolio allocation.” Kamal Nath was in Ujjain to visit the Mahakal temple, from where he proceeded to Badnawar in Dhar district for the bypoll campaign launch of Congress.
The much-awaited cabinet expansion in Madhya Pradesh was done on July 2 with induction of 20 cabinet ministers and eight ministers of state. With five ministers already working, there are now 33 ministers in the state. It was expected that the portfolio allocation would come soon after expansion as is the norm, but it continues to hang fire even five days on.
Speculation of internal tussles regarding portfolios between Chouhan and Rajya Sabha member Jyotiraditya Scindia gained ground after Chouhan left for Delhi on Sunday and met BJP national president J.P. Nadda thrice. He also met Home Minister Amit Shah and Union Minister Narendra Singh Tomar apart from other Union ministers. Officially, he also met President Ram Nath Kovind and Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu during the visit.
The repeated deferment of his return to Bhopal came as an indication that consensus could not be reached regarding distribution of the departments. Due to the delay in Chouhan's return to Bhopal, even the first cabinet meeting scheduled for Tuesday was deferred.
Meanwhile, late on Monday night in Delhi, Scindia met Madhya Pradesh in-charge of BJP Vinay Sahasrabuddhe. Sources said that discussions were held to resolve the stand-off on the issue.
Sources said that the main bones of contention are departments like revenue, urban administration, public works department, water resources, public health engineering, commercial tax, excise, women and child development and school education. Scindia wants these departments to go to his loyalists who are ministers. He also wants that four ministers of state among his supporters should be given independent charges of some departments.
But Chouhan also wants to retain some of the aforementioned departments and wants some important ones to go to the other three ex-Congress MLAs who became ministers. However, the central leadership seems to not have approved Chouhan's proposals, sources said. Now, the final list on distribution of departments is expected to come from Delhi, sources added.
