Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh on Wednesday dropped a broad hint of a possible expansion of his Cabinet by next month to fill up three vacant slots but he ducked question about fate of his Health Minister Amar Agrawal who faces flak for a Government sterilisation camp fiasco which killed over a dozen poor women.
“The Cabinet expansion is due, the three new Ministers may be inducted somewhere around Winter Session of the State Assembly,’’ Singh told scribes at Raipur airport, prior to leaving for New Delhi on his personal trip.
The Winter Session of Chhattisgarh Assembly is scheduled from December 15-24.
The statement assumed major significance in backdrop of growing pressure on him to drop his Health Minister Amar Agrawal from Cabinet after Chhattisgarh was embarrassed last week when over a dozen women died in a botched sterilisation surgery in Bilaspur district.
The shameful incident created a massive outrage in state and raised a serious question mark about Chhattisgarh Government’s sensitiveness towards women.
Sources say that a section of the BJP leaders in the State is of the view that Agrawal should be dropped from the Cabinet but a few influential leaders favour just a change in his portfolio.
Meanwhile, a local court on Wednesday in Raipur sent the father-son director duo of Mahawar Pharmaceuticals, the firm at the centre of investigations into the deaths at a government-run family planning camp, to judicial remand for 15 days.
Police said it would produce solid evidences in court against Ramesh Mahawar and his son Sumit Mahawar after having a detailed investigation during the next 15 days about the drugs supplied to the women by the medicine company at the sterilisation camp.
The faction-ridden Congress which starved of any public issue to revive its fortune in the state since it lost power to the BJP in late 2003, has announced to launch a foot-march or `pad yatra’ from Nov 22 from Bilaspur in a bid to build up further pressure on Raman Singh.
In its six-day campaign which will conclude in Raipur on Nov 27, the Congress would try to extract maximum political mileage out of the sterilisation camp blunders under the BJP regime. The party has sought a CBI probe into the incident as well as immediate sacking of Health Minister Agrawal.