Tuesday's Cabinet reshuffle sends yet another signal that the UPA government is “directionless and leaderless,” the Bharatiya Janata Party said. It is clearly unhappy that Kapil Sibal and P. Chidambaram continue to hold the Communications and Home portfolios.
Party spokesperson Shahnawaz Husain repeated the BJP's allegation that Mr. Sibal was culpable as he had reduced penalties levied on a private telecom company. “Moreover, despite the CAG report on the telecom and 2G spectrum matter, Mr. Sibal publicly said the exchequer had suffered zero loss.”
When it was pointed out that the Supreme Court had only a couple of days ago refused to take note of the allegation that he lowered the penalty, Mr. Husain told journalists here that the matter was far from over. The court simply refused to club that issue with the main 2G spectrum case.
As for Mr. Chidambaram, the BJP's allegation is that earlier as Finance Minister he changed his views on auctioning spectrum, giving the green signal for the first come, first served policy adopted.
With no change in the Finance portfolio held by Pranab Mukherjee, Mr. Husain said it showed that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was not serious about checking inflation.
Mr. Husain lamented that Bihar had no representation in the Cabinet.
Another BJP spokesman, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, described the exercise as a “damp squib” and said it would not help to dispel the atmosphere of gloom and doom that now surrounded the government.
