Singh Allocates Portfolios to Six, Mamata Gets Railways

Just a day after Manmohan Singh government took oath of the office without announcement of portfolios, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced six key portfolios. 

Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee receive railways and former Karnatka chief minister SM Krishna External Affairs Ministry. Singh, contrary of the speculations, has retained senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee and P Chidambaram in Finance and Home Ministries respectively.

In the new Cabinet too, A K Antony gets Defence and Sharad Pawar Agriculture Food, Civil Supplies, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution, the portfolios they had handled in the previous UPA government.

Yesterday, after oath taking ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhawan, Singh has told media persons that the allocation of portfolios would take two or three days.

However, surprisingly the limited allocation of portfolios was announced by the Rashtrapati Bhawan today on the advice of the Prime Minister, who preferred to get down to business and distributed ministries on which there are apparently no no differences.
Portfolios for Ministers including Kamal Nath, Kapil Sibal, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Jaipal Reddy, Anand Sharma and new entrants like Veerappa Moily and C P Joshi are yet to be announced.

It may be mentioned that 19 ministers were sworn-in yesterday.