NEW DELHI, 22 May 2004 — India’s prime minister-designate, Manmohan Singh, was trying yesterday to resolve a row with powerful coalition partners over plum Cabinet posts, a day before his planned inauguration.
The mild-mannered Manmohan joined Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi to mark the 13th anniversary of the murder of her husband Rajiv, but the two quickly returned to talks with a clutch of regional partners as markets remained volatile.
Sonia called off a planned visit to the town of Sriperumbudur in southern India, where Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a suicide bomber in 1991, to help formulate the new administration and a policy blueprint for governance.
“We are in discussion with allies,” senior Congress leader Kamal Nath told reporters, playing down reports of bickering. “Partners can have different views in a coalition. It does not indicate any bitterness. We will carry our allies along.”
The Congress, which had ruled India for most of the first four decades since it won independence from Britain in 1947, is trying to put together a coalition government for the first time.
At least 18 regional, socialist and Communist parties have pledged their support to a Congress-led coalition and each is seeking to exert influence.
Manmohan is likely to be sworn in along with some Cabinet members today.
The Communist parties, which lend vital support to the Congress coalition, added to the pressure, saying they were seeking a commitment from the government not to sell stakes in profitable state firms.
“There should be no disinvestment of core public sector units which includes oil, gas, power and transport firms. We will insist on this,” said Madhukar Kashinath Pandhe, a leader of the Communist Party of Indian, Marxist, the biggest left party.
Congress’s success in the election was ascribed mainly to the charisma of Sonia Gandhi, the torch-bearer of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty which has ruled India for 35 of the 57 years since independence.
But she declined to be prime minister, although she is president of the party and its leader in Parliament, and named Manmohan as her choice.
“The alliance members will demand their pound of flesh in terms of plum portfolios and numbers of ministers in the Cabinet,” said B.S. Nagaraj, a political analyst.
Congress is likely to reserve 40 of the 82 ministerial positions for itself.
Attention is focused on who will be the new finance minister. Manmohan, a former finance minister who drew up India’s reform program in the early 1990s, had been a favorite until Sonia’s withdrawal catapulted him to the top job.
Local newspapers said however that he could retain additional charge of the Finance Ministry for the time being, at least until after presenting the delayed annual budget by July.
Other contenders for the finance portfolio are Pranab Mukherjee and P. Chidambaram, who have both held the job in the past and are respected in the market.
Another key post is the Foreign Ministry. Natwar Singh, who heads Congress’ foreign affairs department, was said to be the top contender there.
The Nationalist Congress Party, which has only nine lawmakers in the new Parliament, was seeking the home or defense posts for its leader, Sharad Pawar, and one or two other ministries, a senior party leader told The Associated Press.
Pawar himself denied any lobbying.
“We keep reading in newspapers that so-and-so demanded this ministry, so-and-so demanded another,” said Pawar. “This is utter nonsense. We are only concerned about the welfare of the people we represent.”
Manmohan’s appointment Wednesday by India’s President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam ended a week of political turmoil in which Sonia declined the job but remained head of the party that will lead the new government.
The allocation of ministries must be approved by her.
In the days after Congress and its allies scored a surprise electoral victory over Vajpayee’s Hindu fundamentalist-led coalition, the outgoing government’s supporters bitterly protested the prospect of Sonia becoming India’s first foreign-born leader.
In his first public comments since his election defeat, Vajpayee praised Manmohan and said he was “somewhat surprised” by the election results.
“I wish Dr. Manmohan Singh well. He’s a learned, practical man who understands the problems of the country very well,” Vajpayee told The Indian Express newspaper in an interview.
