UPA, Upset Progressive Alliance starts swearing

Congress led UPA is getting a second chance to administer India for five more years. And the Swearing-in ceremony is set to happen on May 22. Manmohan Singh will be sworn-in as the Prime Minister and a dozen other Cabinet ministers will be swearing-in today.

But the headaches have already lined up for the United Progressive Alliance as the allies are pitching in hard for key portfolios. On Thursday, May 21 even after having four rounds of discussion between Congress and key ally DMK, the talks failed as the latter was not happy with three Cabinet berths.

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) led by Karunanidhi was asking for 8 cabinet berths including one independent Ministry of State (MoS) post. Congress was ready to give only three as it did not want the entire family clustering the ministry. End result, DMK moving out and giving only outside support to UPA.

UPA's problems does not end here. National Conference (NC) which supported Congress at the time when Left withdrew support to the government and reduced it to a minority is upset too. Farooq Abdullah is skipping the Swearing in ceremony and is heading for South Africa to watch IPL (Indian Premier League) semis. Reason, Congress did not had the courtesy even to inform him whether Abdullah was included in the Cabinet or not.

Even junior Abdullah, the Jammu Kashmir CM Omar too is unhappy. He even said that National Conference leaders were not even invited to the Swearing-in ceremony. Though he claimed that they neither asked for any post nor there is no 'love-hate' relation with Congress

Keeping in view, Omar shares a close bond with Rahul Gandhi, it was obvious that NC expecting a key post to the party Chief. Hopefully Congress-led UPA may sort out the issues soon.

But amidst all these confusions going on, its worth noting that whether the 'hip-hop' experts JD-S lead by Deve Gowda will get any place in the Cabinet. Will the party mini-supremo HD Kumaraswamy get a plump cabinet ministry?