MAHARASHTRA MINISTERS TAKE OATH OF OFFICE; YET TO GET

UNCLAS MUMBAI 002369

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PREL IN
SUBJECT: MAHARASHTRA MINISTERS TAKE OATH OF OFFICE; YET TO GET
PORTFOLIOS

REF: MUMBAI 2286



1. (SBU) On November 9, 2004 Governor Mohammed Fazal
administered the oath of office and confidentiality to 15 senior
ministers chosen to be part of the Congress/Nationalist Congress
Party (NCP) led Democratic Front government of Maharashtra. The
new ministers have yet to receive portfolios. Chief Minister
(CM) Vilasrao Deshmukh of the Congress Party and Deputy Chief
Minister (DCM) R.R. Patil of the NCP told the media that
portfolios would be allocated within the next two weeks.


2. (SBU) Last week, NCP legislator Babasaheb Kupekar was elected
speaker of the state parliament. He ran unopposed. The
opposition coalition of Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) Narayan Rane of the Shiv Sena, who had been chief minister
of Maharashtra from 1997-1999, as leader of the opposition.
Rane had been opposition leader in the outgoing parliament.


3. (SBU) Further ministers are expected to be named in the
coming weeks. Competition for cabinet positions was
particularly fierce in the wake of a January 2004 law that
limits the number of cabinet positions to 15 percent of the
number of deputies in a state parliament. As a result, the new
government is allowed a maximum of 43 ministerial portfolios as
opposed to 67 in the outgoing state government. The NCP is
expected to get 24 portfolios and Congress 19 as a result of the
two parties' coalition agreement. The jobs of CM and DCM both
count against this total, so Congress and NCP will be allocated
18 and 23 portfolios respectively. It is expected that the
ministers sworn in on November 9 will receive the most powerful
and influential ministries. Most of the remaining cabinet jobs
will go to ministers of state and junior ministers.


4. (SBU) The swearing-in ceremony followed intense negotiations
between Congress and NCP for the reduced number of minister
portfolios. Of the 15 ministers sworn in on November 9, six are
members of Congress and nine are NCP members. Congress is set
to lose the larger number of minister posts. Over the last week
the new CM , Vilasrao Deshmukh made four trips to New Delhi to
discuss the cabinet formation with his party's high command.
Several portfolios will also have to be allocated to members of
the smaller parties and to independents who are members of the
coalition. Each party also had to deal with dissatisfied
members of their own ranks who were ministers in the previous
government but will find themselves without a portfolio in the
new, smaller government. Congress and NCP are therefore
expected to address the issue of additional ministers gradually
and on a case-by-case basis in the coming weeks.


5. (SBU) Of the Congress ministers taking oath, the most
prominent were former Industries Minister Patangrao Kadam,
former Forests and Environment Minister Surupsinh Naik and
former labor minister Satish Chaturvedi. Prominent among 9 NCP
ministers sworn in are the two former deputy chief ministers
Vijay Sinh Mohite Patil and Chhagan Bhujbal, former finance
minister Jayant Patil and former irrigation minister Ajit Pawar,
nephew of Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar. The new
ministers will not necessarily inherit the portfolios they held
in the outgoing government. Naik's portfolio, for example, is
expected to go to NCP in the new government.


SIMMONS