Madhya Pradesh: Opposition forms shadow cabinet to monitor BJP government

Congress, the opposition party in Madhya Pradesh, has formed a shadow cabinet to keep a close watch on government’s work.

The idea of shadow cabinet came after Congress faced third consecutive trouncing in the assembly elections and a humiliating defeat in the recently concluded parliamentary election in which the party managed to get just two of 29 seats.

The opposition leader in state assembly, Satyaprakash Katare, announced the formation of a shadow cabinet on Thursday and allocated departments to 44 out of the 55 MLAs in the assembly. “We have been continuously defeated. So when I was chosen for the opposition leader in January this year, I mooted the plan of shadow cabinet. But the parliamentary elections delayed the process,” Katare told Down To Earth over phone.

Previous attempts

Earlier, Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) had tried forming shadow cabinets in Maharashtra, Goa, Punjab and Delhi where it was in opposition. In 2005, Maharashtra was the first state where opposition parties, BJP and Shiv Sena, first mooted shadow cabinet to keep tab on Congress-led government in the states.

Recently, after the formation of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Delhi, BJP leader Harsh Vardhan had announced of forming shadow cabinet, but did not form one.
In India, shadow cabinet does not have a constitutional status like that in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

Unique initiative

Congress claims its shadow cabinet in Madhya Pradesh as a unique initiative in which it had distributed departments to all 44 newly and first-time-elected MLAs.
“There is a 10-point guideline for this shadow cabinet. For example, we have asked our MLAs to read last three years’ budget reports of the government, delve deep into different committee reports and its recommendations related to concerned departments, review manifestos of ruling parties,” says Pankaj Chaturvedi, spokesperson of state Congress party.

“We have decided to play role of strong opposition this time,” he adds.

When asked if the state Congress party had come up with this initiative because of lack of issues against the government, Katare explained that his party had failed to convert number of issues into votes this election.

“There are many issues and scams undergoing but our party has failed to convert them into vote with these issues. So we decided that this time we would not allow this government to take walk-over in future,” he adds.

The ruling party, BJP, has welcomed this move, but with undertones of criticism. Usha Thakur, state vice-president, says: “It is in favour of robust democracy and we welcome it”.

She further added that “our opposition has lost its moral stand against our government because of continuous defeat since 2003.”