Two of the three Congress ministers inducted into Jharkhand’s Hemant Soren-led coalition government last week have caused massive embarrassment to both the party and the 44-day-old government with their candid public statements displaying bitterness and threatening tones.
While uneasy hints of discontent among the ministers in the JMM-Congress-RJD government have led Mr Soren to effect a reshuffle of portfolios, agriculture minister Yogendra Sao and animal husbandry minister Mannan Malik, both from the Congress and inducted on Saturday, are being seen as hard to placate.
Mr Sao, the MLA from Barkagaon, caused a flutter when he said at a public meeting of his caste-based supporters in Ranchi on Monday that he bagged the minister’s post only after a fortnight’s hard lobbying with senior Congress leaders in Delhi. The 49-year-old Sao, whose name figures in the ongoing CBI probe into the alleged horse trading during Jharkhand’s 2010 Rajya Sabha elections, mockingly said he was given agriculture portfolio because he was a farmer’s son.