Jaipur:
Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot's clean-up drive has cost five ministers their place in his team. After getting all 27 ministers - 16 of cabinet rank and 11 junior ministers - to resign yesterday, Mr Gehlot has regrouped, dropping five ministers, picking six new ones and promoting one to cabinet rank.
The new ministry will be sworn in tomorrow afternoon. The ministers who have been dropped are Golma Devi, who was the Minister for Khadi and Village Industries), Ram Lal Jat, Minister for Forest and Environment, Bharosi Lal Jatav, Minister for Agriculture, Animal Husbandry & Fisheries, Pramod Jain 'Bhaya' Minister for PWD, Science & Technology and Master Bhanwar Lal Minister for Labour and Employment, Primary Education, Secondary Education.
These ministers were all seen to have been entangled in murky affairs - Ram Lal Jat, who has been dropped in the shake-up, was linked to a woman who committed suicide. Bharosi Lal Jatav has been accused of allowing illegal mining and is being investigated by the police. Pramod Jain 'Bhaya', known to be close to Mr Gehlot, was charged with corruption by the employees of his own PWD department.
Master Bhanwar Lal lost his Education Ministry for being involved in several public controversies - he has constantly been at loggerheads with teachers and has been accused of using abusive language on public platforms. The only woman to lose her ministerial post, Golma Devi had offered to resign thrice and then rebelled against the government to support her husband Kirorilal Meena.
Mr Gehlot's brief from the Congress leadership in Delhi was clear - to win back Rajasthan by presenting a cleaner face. The CM has been left red-faced a number of times in the recent past with scandals involving his ministers surfacing with alarming regularity.
In his bid to get a cleaner council of ministers he has inducted Virender Beniwal, Amin Pathan, Dayaram Parmar, Manju Meghwal, Naseem Akhtar and Vinod Choudhary as new ministers. Mr Gehlot has also announced seven new Parliamentary Secretaries.
Heading the list of scandals that has undermined the credibility of his government is the disappearance of a nurse named Bhanwari Devi in September. Two Congress leaders - one of them a former minister - have acknowledged to the CBI that they had affairs with her.
Mahipal Maderna, who was a minister till last month, was allegedly filmed with Bhanwari Devi; a CD was circulated when she went missing from her home near Jodhpur. Bhanwari Devi was a Dalit; Mr Maderna is a towering leader of the Jat community. That could have prompted the Chief Minister's visit to a hospital in Jodhpur, where Mr Maderna is being treated for the high blood pressure he reported during his interrogation by the CBI.
The Opposition has said a shake-up is not enough. It wants Mr Gehlot himself to go. "These last incidents have put Rajasthan in a very bad light. I believe there is no point in asking the 'mantri mandal' to resign, the government should go ", Leader of Opposition Vasundhara Raje said.
Mr Gehlot was also challenged by a police firing in September in Gopalgarh, in which 10 Meo Muslims were killed after clashes with the rival Gujjar community over a disputed piece of land. His Home Minister Shanti Dhariwal defended the firing on the Meo Muslims; politically that has damaged the party for whom the Meos are a crucial vote bank, as are the Jats. What's more damaging is that Gopalgarh is in Bharaptur, a district that borders Uttar Pradesh, which will vote soon for its next government.
The backlash for the Gehlot government was assessed by Sonia Gandhi, who had met with the Chief Minister in Delhi. She had also sent a high-level independent "fact-finding committee" to Gopalgarh - it reportedly indicted Mr Gehlot and senior ministers for their clumsy handling of a volatile situation.