It may look bizarre. But true. The Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's efforts to re-constitute almost 40 Empowered-Group of Ministers (E-GoMs) and Group of Ministers (GoMs) after the departure of UPA's trouble-shooter Pranab Mukherjee has come a cropper. While a couple of Cabinet Committees headed by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh himself like the Cabinet Committee of Economic Affairs, Political Affairs and Security Affairs or Infrastructure are functional. But almost 40-odd E-GoMs and Goms are virtually defunct. The Cabinet Secretariat was quick enough to remove the entire list of these empowered group of ministers and GoMs from its website immediately after Pranab Mukherjee resigned on June 26.

Surprisingly, servers of the Cabinet Secretariat relating to this section are down and out of order since June 27. It is shocking that while every other link is functional, only three of these links are down.

Discreet inquiries revealed that initially there was indecision whether the PM will keep the finance portfolio with himself and for how long. A senior Cabinet secretariat official admitted that the "server is partially down and the moment it is repaired, you can access the new list."

But it turned out to be the half-truth. While the entire website of the PMO and the Cabinet Secretariat are functioning, only three links are defunct. These three links deal with E-GoMs, GoMs and Cabinet Committees. When clincked the following messege came up, " Not Found. The requested URL /files/allocation/cabinet_committees.pdf was not found on this server." Same message cropped up when you try for the list of E-GoMs and GoMs. It says, " Not Found. The requested URL /files/allocation/listofegoms.pdf was not found on this server."

Officials in the PMO maintained a complete silence on re-constituting these important committees handling important policy decisions and inter-ministerial issues. Sources say that the Prime Minister is likely to divide the responsibility of heading these 40-odd powerful commitees among few chosen senior cabinet ministers in the absence of Pranab Mukherjee. Top sources in the UPA told that along with home minister P Chidambaram, defence minister A K antony, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, commerce minister anand sharma and telecom minister kapil sibal will be inducted to head some of them.

Power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde is also slated to lead a few GoMs once he is made the Leader of the Lok Sabha in place of Pranab Mukherjee. . At present, he leads the GoM on power sector issues. Mukherjee headed 13 of the 27 GoMs and all 12 EGoMs. While GoM decisions needs ratification by Union cabinet, the EGoM is empowered to take a final call on its agenda.

With Sharad Pawar refusing to head the E-GoM on Spectrum pricing, is playing safe despite having an excellent rapport with Prime Minister and lately with the UPA chairperson Sonia gandhi as well, decisions on crucial issues are held up. Even Chidambaram accepted the spectrum assignment only as head of the Group of Ministers and not Empowered group of ministers. Now Chidambaram's decision will again go to the full Cabinet and he personally won't be held responsible for any lapses either.