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Vajpayee ruffles feathers with reshuffle

Bharatiya Janata Party stormy petrel Uma Bharti on Tuesday found her way back into the Union Cabinet, while Law Minister Arun Jaitley was upgraded with a cabinet rank. BJP Lok Sabha member Bhuvan Chandra Khanduri was sworn in as minister of state.

All three were sworn in by President K R Narayanan at the Rashtrapati Bhavan's Ashoka Hall.

The minor cabinet expansion by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was not without controversy.

BJP vice-president Karia Munda, who was tipped for a cabinet berth, was not accommodated. The brief swearing-in ceremony without Munda's presence left reporters agog with curiosity. The BJP vice-president could not be contacted for comment.

rediff.com had reported that Munda had threatened to leave the party in the wake of the prime minister's inability to give him a ministerial berth.

However, according to BJP sources, Munda had indicated to the BJP leadership that he was not amenable to merely being sworn in as minister of state because he was a cabinet minister during the erstwhile 13-day Vajpayee government at the Centre.

"Had Munda tamely accepted a minister of state post, his prestige among partymen and the National Democratic Alliance coalition would have plummeted. This is why he declined the MoS slot," the sources pointed out.

Munda had been in the eye of a storm when the party leadership preferred to field minister of state for environment and forests Babulal Marandi (who resigned) as the party's chief ministerial candidate for the newly-formed Jharkhand state. Significantly, Munda had protested to the party leadership against this.

The MoS berth offered to him seems to have him the proverbial last straw.

Senior BJP leaders like K Jana Krishnamurthy and Jagdish Prasad Mathur were not willing to comment on Munda's exclusion from the cabinet.

"You better talk to the person concerned," Mathur pointed out.

For Bharti, the return to the Vajpayee government has not been bereft of drama.

In September, she had attracted, as usual, attention by claiming to commit herself to 'agitational politics'. This did not amuse Vajpayee, who hinted that she was welcome to leave the government if she wished.

Bharti went to the Himalayan Badrinath to 'pray' to the gods and purify herself, before launching into 'agitational politics'.

However, the six weeks' absence from the national capital appears to have bored her from her self-proclaimed exile to Badrinath. She made a big song and dance about returning to Delhi to continue her reported 'agitational politics'. Her return was a thinly-veiled bid to get back to the government in a higher slot.

Bharti had threatened the BJP leadership that if she was not "given my due in the government" she would aggravate backward caste politics in Uttar Pradesh, a sore point with the saffron party.

While Jaitley as cabinet minister is tipped to get additional charge of shipping, S S Dhindsa is reportedly being shifted to chemicals and fertilisers. Bharti will head the ministry of youth and sports affairs.

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