Veerappa Moily, who was shifted from Law Ministry to the Corporate Affairs Ministry, said he had been a victim of ‘campaign by vested interests’ for his reform agenda and the ‘fault of administrative ministries’ was wrongly sought to be attributed to him.
Showing signs of frustration hours after the reshuffle, he said he had undertaken a series of reforms in the Law Ministry and schemes worth Rs 21,000 crore were under implementation.
"For the sins of some other ministries, the Law Minister cannot be hanged," Moily said.
Meanwhile, Gurudas Kamat, who quit a day after being apparently unhappy over portfolios allocated to him in the ministerial council reshuffle, did not attend the swearing-in ceremony in Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Kamat, the erstwhile MoS in Home Affairs and IT & Communications, was named MoS (Independent Charge) Drinking Water and Sanitation portfolio on Thursday.
Adding to it, Union Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, who was moved from Rural Development to Science and Technology, likened the Cabinet reshuffle to a game of ‘kho-kho.’
"It's kho-kho," he quipped when asked whether the reshuffle is like a cricket match, referring to the popular field game.
Asked by reporters whether he looked at the change in his portfolio as a demotion, Deshmukh said ‘getting a Cabinet berth at the Centre itself is a promotion. What is a demotion after that? It is getting the rank of a Minister of State’.
Deshmukh is locked in a straight contest with former Test cricketer Dilip Vengsarkar for the post of the Mumbai Cricket Association and was here in connection with the biennial election to the sports body.
Also, Veerappa Moily insisted that he had not been ‘slighted’ and said the new assignment was a challenge for him and he would turn it into an opportunity by carrying out reforms through ‘fast, inclusive justice’ in the corporate world.
"There has been a campaign by the vested interests. They knew reform was not pleasant to everybody, which I can’t help. I have to do this in the best interest of the country," Moily told reporters here when asked whether he had been at the receiving end.
"All these cases which we fail, it is the fault of the administrative ministry. It has got nothing to do with us. We are only the face in the court," he said.
He did not specify but was apparently referring to the flak faced by the government from the judiciary in cases like the 2G scam, blackmoney and salwa judum.