Eight new faces, including two women, have found place in the list of 11 MlAs the Kerala CPI(M) drew up on Sunday to be part of the new lDF Cabinet that will assume charge in the State on Wednesday even as a meeting of the Front decided to keep the size of the Cabinet as 19. Front leader CPI(M) will have 12 members in the Cabinet including politburo member Pinarayi Vijayan, the Chief Minister-designate.
As per the decisions taken at the lDF meeting on Sunday, the CPI will have four Ministers in the Government and minor front constituents JD(S), NCP and Congress (S) will get one berth each. The Speaker of the fourteenth Kerala Assembly will be from the CPI(M) while the position of the Deputy Speaker would go to the CPI, said lDF convener Vaikom Viswan.
The meeting also decided to hold the swearing-in ceremony of the new Government at the Central Stadium, Thiruvananthapuram at 4.00 PM on Wednesday and to keep it as simple as possible. Another decision was to limit the number of personal staff members of each Minister to 25 and not to have people above 60 years of age among them.
A final decision on allocation of portfolios will be taken in a meeting on Wednesday. The names of the CPI members of the Cabinet and its nominee to the post of Deputy Speaker are expected to come out on Monday. Viswan said
decisions on all remaining issues would be taken at the first meeting of the new Cabinet, expected to be held on Wednesday itself.
There are four lDF allies with one member each but they will not have representation in the Cabinet as they are not constituents of the front. In the election held on May 16, the CPI(M) had bagged 63 seats and the CPI 19 while the JD(S) won three seats, the NCP two and Congress (S) one. The Congress-led UDF, which was in power, was reduced to 47 in the 140-member House.
The new faces in the CPI(M)’s list of proposed Cabinet members include central committee members EP Jayarajan (member from Mattannur) and KK Shailaja (Koothuparambu), State secretariat members J Mercykutty Amma (Kundara) and TP Ramakrishnan (Perambra) and State committee member Kadakampally Surendran (Kazhakkoottam).
The CPI(M) has only five women in the 14th Assembly and it has proposed two of them, Shailaja and Mercykutty Amma, to the Cabinet. Other first-timers are former Thrissur district secretary AC Moideen (Kunnamkulam), C Raveendranath (Puthukkad), an area committee member, and left Independent KT Jaleel (Thavanoor).
TM Thomas Isaac (Alappuzha), AK Balan (Tharoor), both central committee (CC) members of the party, and G Sudhakaran (Ambalappuzha), a State committee member, who were members of the 2006-11 lDF Cabinet, will be part of the new government. The list will be announced only with the approval of the party State committee which is meeting on Monday.
Chief Minister-designate Pinarayi Vijayan himself is a former minister. He was Power minister for two years in the 1996-2001 lDF government headed by late EK Nayanar. Vijayan had resigned in 1998 to take charge as the CPI(M)’s State secretary. Young State committee member P Sreeramakrishnan’s name has been proposed for the post of Speaker.
Mercykutty Amma is known as a loyalist of senior leader VS Achuthanandan, Opposition leader in the 13th Assembly, and Isaac, an eminent economist, is said to be a group-neutral leader in the Kerala CPI(M). All others in the list are staunch loyalists of Pinarayi. Jayarajan and Shailaja hail from Pinarayi’s home district, Kannur.
Sources said that minor changes to the list could not be ruled out as the factor of representation of districts in the Cabinet had yet to be taken into consideration. They claimed that particular care had been taken by the State secretariat to make the list a perfect mix of professionalism, efficiency and class representation.
JD(S) leader and former minister Mathew T Thomas said the name of his party’s representative in the Cabinet would be announced on Monday. Disputes have arisen between the two members of the NCP over who should become minister but party general secretary Praful Patel said the issue would be settled smoothly.