MUMBAI: After intense haggling for over a fortnight in a bid to wrest key ministries from its coalition partner NCP, the Congress on Friday agreed for a compromise formula in Maharashtra paving the way to form the government which will be sworn in on Friday in Mumbai.
According to sources in the Congress, since the state units of both the parties were at loggerheads, the final agreement was reached between NCP leader and Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel and Ahmed Patel, political secretary to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, in New Delhi.
According to the formula, the NCP has agreed to give 23 portfolios to the Congress while it will have 20 ministries.
However, it will retain the key portfolios of Home and Finance. In the last two tenures, both the parties shared equal Cabinet berths.
“We were making a point that since we have 20 more MLAs than the NCP, naturally we should have more Cabinet berths.
The NCP, on the other hand, was insisting on the older formula of parity in berth allotments. Anyway, matters have been sorted out, and the government will be sworn in tomorrow,” a senior Congress leader said. The Congress had secured 82 and the NCP 62 MLAs in the recentlyconcluded Assembly elections.
CONG LEADER IN TROUBLE
Meanwhile, the Congress found itself in a crisis with Kripashankar Singh, Mumbai Congress president and a strong contender for a ministerial berth, being dragged into a controversy linking him with the scam involving former Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda.
Some of the Opposition leaders, pointing out that Koda and his former Cabinet colleague Kamlesh Singh had business relationships with Singh, demanded that his role in the scam should be investigated.
Kamlesh Singh is the father-in-law of Kripashankar Singh’s son Sanjay.
It was also revealed that in his affidavits for the 2004 and 2009 Assembly elections, Singh had declared different PAN card numbers which could land him in trouble.
