BENGALURU: With less than a week to go for the commencement of the monsoon session of the legislature, the ruling Congress finds itself staring down a familiar problem — and possibly the start of a new one.
Sources in the party say the failure to finalise portfolio allocations has become a fresh source of anxiety at the top. The party, already contending with one wave of internal discontent, now faces the prospect of a second: once departments are finally handed out, ministers who feel short-changed with lesser or unwanted portfolios are expected to make their displeasure known.
While AICC General Secretary Randeep Surjewala and KPCC president BK Hariprasad have gone around “fire fighting” the first round of discontent, the concern now is what to do about this fresh problem. It is no secret that most of the prime portfolios have already been taken in the first round, leaving only what insiders call the “unwanted portfolios” still to be assigned.
A former senior minister who has held charge of Kannada and Culture, Cooperation, Forest, and Primary Education, among other departments, in previous Congress governments, offered a more philosophical take.
“Ministers who look at the portfolios from the point of view of budgetary allocations could end up disheartened,” the Congress leader told TNIE, adding, “I for one never bothered about portfolios but just did the best of what I got. And every portfolio is good when one looks at what one can do to serve the people.”
The delay is not just an internal headache — it carries real risks on the floor of the House. Sources say unfinished allocations could leave the party exposed to embarrassment once the session begins, since starred questions must be answered by the minister concerned, in person, on the floor.
Without clarity on who holds which department, there is growing concern over who will even be standing up to answer. Compounding the problem, Congress leaders are reportedly worried that newly appointed ministers may simply not have had time to master their briefs.
With portfolios still undecided so close to the session, officials fear ministers will be left scrambling to get up to speed — let alone mount a confident defence of government policy under questioning.
Ministers-designate, meanwhile, are working with an increasingly tight and uncertain runway to prepare, with each day of delay eating further into their limited window.
Political Analyst B S Murthy said, “The delay in portfolio allocation is, in many ways, a problem entirely of the party’s own making — and that is precisely what makes it politically costly. Cabinet formation and portfolio distribution are among the most predictable events in the legislative calendar; a session date, once set, does not move to accommodate internal negotiations.
That the party finds itself racing the clock so close to the session suggests the intense bargaining over departments has proven harder to resolve than anticipated, likely reflecting competing claims from factions, regional lobbies, and seniority-based expectations within the party.’’
Starred questions are a core accountability mechanism of any legislature — a moment when the opposition can test a government’s command over policy in real time. A minister who has held a portfolio for mere days, or who does not yet know it is theirs, is structurally disadvantaged in that exchange.
If departments are announced only just before or even after the session begins, the party risks a scenario where the opposition benches sense blood: an unprepared minister fumbling answers, or worse, a starred question going unanswered because no one has formal charge of the subject.