Union cabinet reshuffle on Monday
New Delhi: The reshuffle of the Union Cabinet will take place on Monday.
On Saturday, CP Joshi and Ajay Maken stepped down as Cabinet ministers. Their resignations were accepted by President Pranab Mukherjee with immediate effect, a Rashtrapati Bhawan communique said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is expected to utilize the opportunity to fill several vacancies in his Council of Ministers. Singh had earlier said that there were some vacancies and the issue of filling them up was being considered.
The latest vacancies in the Council of Ministers were created by the resignations of Union Ministers PK Bansal and Ashwani Kumar. Bansal quit as the Railways Minister last month in the wake of bribery scandal involving his nephew and a Railway Board member. Kumar resigned as the Law Minister following a controversy over vetting of a CBI probe report on coal blocks allocation scam.
The Railway portfolio was given to Joshi as an additional charge while that of Law went to Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal also as an additional ministry. In the reshuffle, ministers holding two portfolios could be divested of one, sources said. With DMK and TMC withdrawing support to the UPA government, a number of slots vacated by them are yet to filled up.
Some ministers may also be drafted for organizational work ahead of the next Lok Sabha polls, the sources said.
A reshuffle in AICC, which is long overdue, is also being firmed up. Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, who is also the general secretary in-charge of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, could be given new responsibilities.There are indications that AICC general secretary and media department in-charge Janardan Dwivedi may give up the charge of media, a job he had done for six years now.
