The government has sent the notification on cabinet portfolio changes to the President house and a formal announcement is expected soon, reports CNBC-TV18's Shereen Bhan quoting sources.
Since Pranab Mukherjee resigned from his post to fight the Presidential election, the Prime Minister was handling the finance portfolio as well. That vacancy has made the portfolio rejig necessary.
It is now indeed confirmed that P Chidambaram is going to be moving back to North Block. This is going to be good news as far as the market I concerned. Chidambaram is seen as an investor-friendly and a progressive reformist. So, it is going to be interesting to see what he can really do in this tenure as finance minister.
In his place at the home ministry, we are going to see Sushil Kumar Shinde, the former Maharashtra chief minister, now the Power Minister coming in and taking over from Chidambaram. That is not going to go down particularly well because Sushil Kumar Shinde has been anything, but short of a disappointment as the Power Minister.
The power ministry under Shinde has been an absolute disaster. We have seen what has happened over the last 24 hours with the northern grid collapsing, not once, but twice. In fact, today even the eastern grid collapsed. We certainly hope that his tenure at the home ministry is at least better than what he delivered as the power minister.
Sources also say that Corporate Affairs Minister Veerappa Moily is going to be taking additional charge of the power ministry. He will be taking over from Sushil Kumar Shinde and holding the power portfolio additionally, but sources also say that a full-time power minister could be appointed shortly, but at this point these are the three changes.
It is learnt that once the Parliament actually resume it is going to be very difficult for the PM to be taking questions and attending to the business of the finance minister specially given the economic conditions at this point in time and hence the government thought it was prudent to move Chidambaram back to the finance ministry.
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