'Gandhi loyalist' Shinde succeeds Pranab in Lok Sabha

New Delhi, Aug 3: Another good news for

who recently became the Union Home Minister of India. Shinde has been named as the Leader of the House in Lok Sabha, a post which was vacated by

.

According to sources, the party high command's decision to make Shinde the Leader of House made NCP and especially Sharad Pawar unhappy. Both Pawar and Shinde are believed to be arch rivals, though the former was latter's mentor in politics.

Earlier, several Congress leaders suggested Rahul Gandhi's name for the position but finally the party on Friday, Aug 3 announced Shinde's name. It seems that Shinde's loyalty towards Gandhi family indeed proved to be fruitful for him.

Shinde's elevation to the Home Ministry brought several stern criticism for UPA government as opposition parties claimed that he was rewarded for his loyalty towards Sonia Gandhi and family.

Many questioned the government regarding Shinde's promotion when the person seems to have failed to fulfill his duty as the Power Minister. The incident of Tuesday's power grid failure happened less than 24 hours after supplies from the Northern Grid was restored after an outage on early Monday morning that affected over 30 crore (300 million).

According to sources, Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh too was not pleased with Shinde as the former had written a letter to the latter in 2011 saying that he (Shinde) was not doing enough to improve the country's power situation.

Amid such reports, UPA's decision to declare Shinde's name as the successor of P Chidambaram maligned the central government's name. Earlier on Tuesday, Chidambaram was made the Finance Minister while Corporate Affairs Minister Veerappa Moily got additional charge of Power Ministry.

The Cabinet reshuffle was facilitated after Pranab Mukherjee moved out to become the President of India leaving the post of Union Finance Minister vacant.

OneIndia News