PANAJI
Chief Minister Pramod Sawant has played it safe and refrained from rocking his cabinet boat with the portfolio allocation and re-allocation exercise necessitated with last week's induction of Digambar Kamat and Ramesh Tawadkar as cabinet ministers.
First off, he carefully chose the official Ganesh Chaturthi public holiday to execute the portfolio distribution apparently aimed at minimising the reactions.
More importantly, Sawant has also refrained from making any major change in the responsibilities assigned to the nine original members of his cabinet, preferring instead to shed some of the meaty portfolios he himself held -- Public Works Department, Department of Drinking Water and Tribal Welfare.
He allocated the PWD portfolio to Kamat in addtion to two other smaller departments -- Captain of Ports (CoP) and Weights and Measures. Interestingly, barring CoP, none of the portfolios allocated to Kamat were held earlier by Aleixo Sequeira who the Margao MLA replaced in the cabinet.
As for Tawadkar, all three portfolios he has been allocated -- Sports, Tribal Welfare and Art & Culture -- were previously held by Govind Gaude whose place he has taken in the cabinet.
Meanwhile, the only two original ministers whose portfolios have undergone a minor shakeup are -- Sudin Dhavlikar and Subhash Phaldesai. While Dhavlikar's power portfolio has been untouched, he has been divested of the responsibility of the Housing portfolio and has instead been allocated the Gazetteer department.
Phaldesai meanwhile got a boost with the responsibility of the newly formed Department of Drinking Water (DDW) carved out of the PWD coming under his charge.
However, Sawant has removed the Archives and Archaeology portfolio from his (Phaldesai) charge and retained it with himself. Phaldesai nonetheless retains the meaty Social Welfare department.
