Source: Hueiyen News Service
New Delhi, May 21 2009:
As the Congress finalised its own list of ministers in the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government to be sworn in here tomorrow, the party intensified parleys with allies to select their slice of portfolios.
Pranab Mukherjee, P Chidambaram, A K Antony, Kamal Nath, Kapil Sibal, Salman Khursheed, Prakash Jaiswal, Ms Meira Kumar, Jaipal Reddy, H R Bhardwaj, Sisram Ola, Veerappa Moily, Madhavsinh Solanki and Bijoy Krishna Handique are likely to find Cabinet berths, according to Congress party sources.
Allies seeking Cabinet portfolios are Mamata Banerjee and Somendra Nath Mitra from Trinamool Congress, Sharad Pawar, the NCP supremo, Farooq Abdullah of National Conference and Shibu Soren of JMM.
Other names doing rounds for the 65-member council of ministers from Congress are Murli Deora or his son Milind Deora, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot, Oscar Fernandes, Jitin Prasada, Jagdambika Pal, Mukul Wasnik,Shashi Tharoor, Pawan Kumar Bansal, Kumari Selja, Naveen Jindal, Deepinder Hooda, Rao Inderjit Singh, Mahinder Singh Kaypee, Manish Tewari, Ms D Purandeswari, Suresh Kalmadi, Srikant Jena, Beni Prasad Verma, P L Punia, Mohammed Asarul Haque, Ms Anu Tandon, P C Chako, Meenakshi..
Natarjan, Gurudas Kamat, Ms Jyoti Mirdha, Ms Deep Dasmunsi, Virbhadra Singh, Subodh Kant Sahai,Bhakta Charan Das, Kanti Lal Bhuria, T K S Elangovan, Mallikarujan Kharge, Dharam Singh, Satpal Maharaj, Vijay Bahuguna, Dinsha Patel, A B Sayeed, Narayansamy, Ranee Narah, Dr Thockhom Meinya, Charan Das Mahant,Jagan Mohan Reddy, Aruna Kumar Vundavalli, Saifuddin Soz, and K Sambasiva Rao.
Probables among the allies are Praful Patel and Supriya Sule from NCP, Sultan Ahmed, Dinesh Trivedi and Sudip Bandhopadya from TMC, and Asaduddin Owaisi from AIMIM.
For the office of Speaker, Kishore Chandra Deo, Jaipal Reddy and Sushil Kumar Shinde are the front-runners.