Manmohan Sworn In as India’s New Premier

NEW DELHI, 23 May 2004 — Manmohan Singh, the father of India’s economic reforms program, was sworn in as prime minister yesterday, placing the Congress party back in control of the nation after eight years on the sidelines.

He was sworn in by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in a ceremony at the imposing pink sandstone presidential palace in the heart of New Delhi.

Congress, whose leader, Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, declined the top post, will lead a minority coalition after it ousted Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Hindu fundamentalist government in elections held over three weeks in April and May.

After several days of bargaining with coalition partners over key ministerial posts, Manmohan, 71, took the oath of office, dressed in a light blue Sikh turban and white, high-neck cotton tunic.

Kalam also swore in 28 members of Manmohan’s Cabinet and another 40 ministers of state and junior ministers who will form his government. The group included seven women and Bollywood star Sunil Dutt.

“The Cabinet is a reflection of India’s diversity and richness,” Manmohan said afterward. He acknowledged there were “difficulties in finalizing the Cabinet” and said portfolios would be announced today.

Sonia, who attended the ceremony, told reporters: “The government will be stable. We’ll be working on that.”

It is widely speculated that Manmohan himself may take on a dual role as prime minister and finance minister, a position he held in the early 1990s under a previous Congress-led government.

Manmohan and Sonia had been meeting with leaders of different political parties to haggle over the number of offices each party would receive in the Cabinet.

He is expected to assign key ministries such as foreign affairs, defense and security to members of his own party but leave several high-profile economic ministries like petroleum, communications and rural development for allies, a Congress official said.

Among the members of the incoming Cabinet who took their oaths were Pranab Mukherjee, a senior Congress leader and former finance minister; Congress veteran Arjun Singh; former Defense Minister Sharad Pawar; and maverick low-caste icon Laloo Prasad Yadav.

Vajpayee, who will be the leader of the opposition in the new house, smiled and shook Manmohan’s hand before the handover of power.

Congress sources said Manmohan was likely to hand the crucial Home (interior) Ministry to Pranab Mukherjee and foreign affairs to veteran diplomat Natwar Singh, who held the portfolio in the 1980s. It was unclear who would get the sensitive Defense Ministry.

The Hindustan Times said a formula had been worked out that each ally would be given one ministerial berth for every four lawmakers it had in Parliament.

Congress has only 145 seats in the 545-member house and its allies about another 170. The communists have not joined government but are supporting it from outside.

Late on Friday, Congress unveiled a draft working agenda it said had been thrashed out with its partners in the new United Progressive Alliance but which is still to be fine-tuned. The draft Common Minimum Program (CMP) prioritizes assistance for farmers and job creation but rejects the privatization of state-owned oil and power firms.

It also promises worker protection, more jobs, more economic reforms but “with a human face”, as well as better ties with Pakistan, China and Sri Lanka.

The Oxford-educated Manmohan, an economist from modest roots, will be mainly Hindu India’s first prime minister from a minority religion and is a staunch secularist.

Manmohan commands wide cross-party respect as a man of integrity in the murky political arena of the world’s biggest democracy.

Sonia, widow of assassinated former Premier Rajiv Gandhi and torchbearer of the powerful Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, is still seen as wielding heavy clout as Congress president despite refusing the top job.

She has not revealed why she declined the post except to say she never sought power and wanted only to give India a strong, secular and stable government.

But Sonia had faced strident attacks from outgoing Hindu government members who said it would be shameful for India to be led by someone who was foreign-born, even one who held an Indian passport.