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Sujanapal to be sworn in Minister on January 4

Girish Menon

This may help Chandy manage coalition equations

A. Sujanapal

Thiruvananthapuram: Congress MLA A. Sujanapal will be inducted as a Minister in the Oommen Chandy Government at 10 a.m. on January 4. Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Thursday informed Governor R.L. Bhatia his decision to effect the change in his Cabinet.

Mr. Sujanapal comes in as a replacement for K.P. Viswanathan, who resigned in February following the High Court's adverse observations in a forest case. Water Resources Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan has been holding additional charge as Forest Minister since then.

As far as Mr. Sujanapal is concerned, his induction as Minister at the fag end of the Chandy Ministry's will at best give him the recognition that comes from being a Minister. There is hardly any time for him to contribute meaningfully to the post he will soon hold.

He lost the race to ministership on three occasions. He was sidelined in 1991, 2001and 2004 at the height of factional politics.

Mr. Sujanapal, who represents the Kozhikode 1 Assembly constituency, stoically responded to the news of his prospective induction into the Cabinet. "I see it as a recognition, even though there is not much time to contribute anything meaningfully," he said over telephone.

Inducting a new face in the Cabinet when the Ministry has only three more months remaining might seem an inane exercise, but for a coalition and a party trying to find its feet, the move has larger dimension.

The Chief Minister had on Wednesday indicated that Mr. Viswanathan had informed him about his disinclination to return to the Cabinet. Even after resigning office, Mr. Viswanathan continued to hold a lien on the Forest Minister's post and was consulted on all major issues relating to the department's functioning.

The decision to induct a new Minister also appears to have been prompted by the pressures of coalition politics. Mr. Radhakrishnan, who brought some direction to the Forest Department's affairs, has been taking strong positions on forest-related issues, the most controversial being the status of the Cardamom Hills Reserve.

The head-on confrontation between the Forest Department and the Revenue Department, headed by a senior coalition leader like Kerala Congress (M) leader K.M. Mani, on the issuance of title deeds to settlers had led to straining of relations within the coalition.

His insistence on the cut off date of January 1, 1977 for issuance of title deeds and his refusal to go against the Forest Conservation Act reportedly provoked Mr. Mani to make sharp remarks.

The induction of a Minister, it seems, presented the least painful opportunity for the Chief Minister to wriggle out of the problem. According to Congress sources, Mr. Sujanapal's induction will also help the Congress make a correction in the communal equations, besides bringing in a Malabar representation.

However, there is a large segment in the party which believes that inducting a Minister at this juncture will only prove to be counter-productive and lead to loss of image among the public.

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