Even empowered groups bank on Cabinet power as ministers play safe

Even empowered groups bank on Cabinet power as ministers play safe Jyoti Mukul & Surajeet Dasgupta / New Delhi Oct 21, 2012, 00:47 IST

Until a year back, if the Manmohan Singh Cabinet could not resolve an issue, it would create a group of ministers. But, now, if the ministers do not want to take a final call, they go back to the Cabinet even if they are empowered.

The aftermath of A Raja serving a jail sentence is that no single minister wants to decide on an issue that could bring investigators to his door. So, on Thursday, an empowered group of ministers (EGoM) on telecom headed by Finance Minister P Chidambaram sent all its decisions to the Cabinet for final clearance though it did not have to do so.

Chidambarams name, too, was dragged into the controversy by Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy, who filed a court case seeking a probe into the finance ministers alleged role in the 2G scam. The Supreme Court in August dismissed the case on grounds of lack of evidence.

Union minister Jaipal Reddy, who himself got the tricky issue of fuel price changes cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs in September, said it depended on the sensitivity of a matter. There are a lot of experienced people in the Cabinet and their advice is important. In case of telecom, the matter has monumental monetary implications, with a lot of corporate interests involved, Reddy told Business Standard. He said it was the Prime Ministers decision to discontinue with the EGoM on fuel. Asked if there was need for a larger political consensus, he said, Perhaps.

R S Pandey, a retired bureaucrat, who had seen one of the most controversial times as secretary in the ministry of petroleum and natural gas, said whether a decision should be referred to Cabinet or not depended on the terms of reference of the EGoM. The terms of reference of the telecom EGoM empowered it to look into various issues related to the grant of licences and allocation of spectrum in the 2G band in 22 services areas. This included the setting of a reserve price for the auction and spectrum usage charges. After deliberations, the EGoM gave two alternatives: a base price of Rs 14,000 crore and another of Rs 16,000 crore for five MHz of spectrum to the Cabinet. The Cabinet decided to go for Rs 14,000 crore.

Sometimes, even when decisions can be resolved within a ministry or by an inter-ministerial group of officials, they are still referred to the Cabinet or its committees. Perturbed by controversies, Murli Deora became one of the first ministers to do so when in 2007 he pushed for the formation of an EGoM for fixing a price for natural gas produced from the KG-D6 block of Reliance Industries. The decision could have been taken by the minister himself but for the fight between Ambani brothers. Similarly, for granting clearance to the $6-billion Cairn-Vedanta deal, Deora went to the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) though the norms did not require it. Safeguarding the interests of the government-controlled Oil and Natural Gas Corporation was said to be the reason why Deora went to the CCEA. The deal was later cleared with preconditions by a group of ministers that had Reddy as Deoras replacement.

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Even empowered groups bank on Cabinet power as ministers play safe