Saturday, July 14, 2012

Pawar-Patel boycott UPA meet, A new crisis emerges

PM removes names of own Cabinet Ministers from his website
 
A big political crisis has engulfed the UPA today with Nationalist Congress Party leaders Sharad Pawar and Praful Patel boycotting its meeting this evening at the Prime Minister’s residence to chose Vice Presidential candidate.

The boycott of the NCP leaders shocked political circles as Pawar had lately being considered as the new trouble-shooter of the UPA after Pranab Mukherjee’s elevation as Presidential candidate.

Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar and Heavy Industries Minister Praful Patel stay put in Mumbai today. Efforts to contact Sharad Pawar yielded no results. But Praful Patel confirmed that he did not attend the meeting due to “pre-occupation.”  When asked why Pawar did not attend, he declined to say anything.

Sources say that Pawar is extremely unhappy with the UPA leadership over the question of who should be Number two in the government. While his name appeared immediately after the Prime Minister’s name in the official website of the PMO after Pranab Mukherjee demitted office on June 26 as Finance Minister, later Defence Minister A K Antony set next to the PM at the Cabinet meeting.

Suddenly, the list of Cabinet Ministers vanished from the PM’s own website. “The PM himself removed the list from his website of Cabinet Ministers. Surely, he may be re-assessing the order in which names are to be listed,” said a senior minister close to the developments.

But the crisis is far from over. While the boycott of Pawar is understood to be not linked to the issue of Dr Hamid Ansari being given the second term.
The crisis is really bigger for the UPA on the issue of hierarchy.