Economic
Times: New Delhi: Tuesday, 27 January 2015.
They might be
outnumbered by male counterparts but women ministers in Team Modi seem to
attend Cabinet meetings more than their colleagues.
Information
accessed by ET through Right to Information (RTI) Act shows that unlike
Congress-led UPA regime, BJP's allies are more involved in the decision-making
process at the Centre with ministers regularly attending meetings.
The top
performers as far as attending Cabinet meetings are concerned are human
resource development minister Smriti Zubin Irani and water resources minister
Uma Bharti who have not missed a single Cabinet meeting since the Modi
government assumed power and held its first Cabinet meeting on May 27 last
year. Chemicals and fertilisers minister Ananth Kumar and agriculture minister
Radha Mohan Singh finish a close second missing only one meeting so far.
The two BJP
ministers are followed by science and technology minister Harshvardhan,
minority affairs minister Najma Heptullah, civil aviation minister Ashok
Gajapathi Raju and consumer affairs minister Ramvilas Paswan. Worst attendees
are urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu, heavy industries minister Anant
Geete and home minister Rajnath Singh. Though data on attendance of ministers
is not separately maintained by the Cabinet Secretariat, the public authority
where ET filed an RTI application, the public information officer (PIO) allowed
this correspondent file inspection of only the attendance sheet of the
confidential Cabinet meetings files.
The data was
collated for meetings held between May and December 2014. It reveals that BJP's
allies are far more conscientious in attending Cabinet meetings than some of
BJP's own ministers. Paswan (Lok Janshakti Party), Ashok Gajapathi Raju (TDP)
and Harsimrat Kaur Badal (SAD) fare better than BJP ministers including
Venkaiah Naidu, home minister Rajnath Singh and tribal affairs minister Jual
Oram.
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