Why should ‘cleanest ever Govt’ go for Cabinet reshuffle?

In absence of performance indicators, it is only to accommodate Soz, Azad

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, May 26: Last time it was not Chief Minister Omar Abdullah but JKPCC chief Saifuddin Soz who announced allocation of portfolios of the Council of Ministers. This time, it is the AICC General Secretary incharge of Jammu & Kashmir who has publicly announced that there would be a Cabinet reshuffle in the state immediately after the Panchayat election process was over. Chief Minister, and almost everybody in top echelons of the ruling National Conference (NC), in fact, had been avoiding direct reply to this question whenever inquisitive scribes attempted a digging.

With the three vacancies (two of Congress and one of NC) existing in the Council of Ministers, speculations of a minor expansion or reshuffle in the Cabinet have been blinking for the last over one year. During the process, one of the potential contenders from Congress has been physically incapacitated. People enjoying access to corridors of power, from Srinagar to Delhi, insist that Chief Minister would have to accommodate both factions of the coalition partner. According to them, one of the Congress nominees would come from Soz and another from Azad.

Speculations are by now galore that dignity would be restored to the Azad faction by way of getting Ghulam Mohammad Saroori off the hook in the CBI investigation into a matter of impersonation and subsequently reinstating him as the Minister incharge Works. Few in politics expect former MLC and one time Minister of Social Welfare, Abdul Gani Vakil, to stage a comeback. Sources in Congress emphasize that Soz would relent in favour of Azad’s nominee only if the crown of Deputy Chief Minister was shifted to R S Chib and Tara Chand would be reduced to a simple cabinet berth. That is entirely Congress party’s in-house trouble and Chief Minister seems to be aware that he would have to simply take the two names from AICC.

In the last over 28 months, Chief Minister has not been able to make a choice between Chowdhary Mohammad Ramzan and Mir Saifullah in the matter of giving representation to Kupwara district.

That makes the much speculated exercise simply an expansion. What has surprised many in political and bureaucratic circles is the phrase ‘reshuffle’---dropping Ministers, inducting new faces and changing portfolios. AICC General Secretary has indicated in no ambiguous terms that Ministers of poor performance and tainted integrity would be replaced by ‘clean hands’.

But the big question today is, as it was yesterday, as to who is clean and a good performer and who is not. It becomes all the more difficult for the leaders who have limited connection with the masses. Information Department’s press releases about the numbers and size of the delegations who meet Chief Minister at his office or a ‘public darbar’ serves as a public statement someone like Jagmohan would highlight to establish his popularity in the Valley. Leaders of the state’s single largest political party can not be eulogized by the numbers and volume of their daily visitors.

Opinions of Police, intelligence agencies and political activists---all pulling down one another---are invariably subjective in matters of the assessment of one’s integrity. The youthful, innocent head of the government is left with no option but to make believe that everything is smooth until proven rough and everybody is clean until proven tainted. “I want concrete evidence”, he has repeatedly asserted whenever he chose to speak on corruption of public servants and public men. Since there is no mechanism of audio-visual recording of one’s involvement in corruption, nobody is an A Raja, Suresh Kalmadi or Kanimozhi in our state.

Farooq Abdullah’s, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s and Ghulam Nabi Azad’s observation was different. Mufti did not unleash bloodhounds on one and all. He spread fear among businesspersons by dismantling structures of very influential people. He sent a word of caution to media by freezing advertisements of the state’s most influential newspaper and got the office of an influential daily dismantled in a matter of seconds. He sent shivers down the spine of bureaucracy when a prospective Chief Secretary, Ajit Kumar, was implicated in the infamous jute scandal and forced to go into hiding to escape arrest.

Call it cleansing or witch-hunting, these acts paid dividends to Mufti ever after he lost power. On the contrary, there appears to be no fear among Omar Abdullah’s bureaucrats, officials and Ministers. They know it well that in absence of “concrete proof”, nobody would hold them accountable. Their level of confidence has risen in view of the fact that not a single official or politician has been proceeded against in the last two-and-a-half years. In the Chief Minister’s “Year against Corruption”, everybody involved in serious matters of corruption has been not only reinstated but also rehabilitated on enviable positions. Why talk of Cabinet reshuffle and replacing tainted ones by the clean ones?

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