Salman Khursheed has replaced Veerappa Moily as the new law minister with Moily taking on the corporate affairs portfolio in the second cabinet reshuffle just announced by prime minister Manmohan Singh-led UPA government this year.
Khursheed told NDTV that the appointment was a great honour although it was a “very very tough job” he had been given which he was very determined about. He added that the cabinet had to work very hard for two years to get re-elected with a bright leadership.
The oath of office and secrecy shall be administered by the President of India at 5pm today to Khursheed and others with the four most important ministries finance, defence, home and external affairs remaining unchanged, according to a press release from the PIB.
Born in 1953, Kursheed was elected to the tenth Lok Sabha in 1991 and the same year he was made the union deputy minister in the commerce ministry. In 1993 he was appointed union minister of state in the external affairs department.
The next milestones he achieved in his political career were when he was appointed the president of Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee in 1999 and the general secretary of All India Congress Committee in 2004. Kursheed was there after elected to the fifteenth Lok Sabha in 2009 which was his second term. He retains his post as minorities minister but is giving up the water portfolio.
Khursheed was designated a senior advocate at Supreme Court of India and senior counsel in 1999. In the early 1980s he was also a senior partner at Talib Luthra & Associates and lists an “extensive chamber and court practice especially in commercial, consitutional, airlines, press law and administrative law”.
According to his Lok Sabha profile his interests are “theatre, reading (history and biographies) and media” and had read an undergraduate in law at Oxford University.
Moily was wrongly tipped earlier this year in January to lose the law ministry, a post he took up in May 2009.
Moily has announced a number of ambitious reform plans in his tenure, including a “national litigation policy” to cut the cases of government departments and pendency of cases.
He had remained non-committal on the issue of allowing foreign law firms to enter, unlike his predecessor HR Bhardwaj.
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wish you happy life
However, he will ultimately leave the decision to the Congress. Sonia is an anti-reformist and I doubt if she will allow foreign law firms, unless maybe Quattrochi is a partner
ANY GOSSIP ON HIS STANDING WITH SILF MEMBERS ANYONE?
KIAN: Could you please please interview the new minister on his take on entry of foreign firms and let us all know? Thanks.
It's not easy to be able to say as a fact that someone has done "nothing" (i.e., proving the non-existence of a thing is harder than proving its existence, usually).
It certainly appears that Moily made a lot of announcements but apparently did not end up delivering very much (hence our somewhat tongue-in-cheek caption "Moily: Big plans" under his photo). In our coverage this was implied by us mentioning that he "announced" plans but we explicitly did not mention about anything having been implemented. Readers were expected to draw their own conclusions rather than us offering an opinion and banging readers over the head with it.
If at the time of our first report there had been a nice quote like Mr Dhavan's below available, we could have included it, although perhaps it is slightly unfair too.
But does anyone except for a few insiders actually know why Moily did not apparently implement any of his reform plans? I and others certainly thought that some of his litigation reforms looked good on paper.
Moily claims "vested interests" prevented him from implementing it. What are the other theories? That he did not want to reform litigation delays? That he is not competent? That he was somehow influenced not to pursue those plans by someone who wants more litigation delays?
I think a fact is that there probably are a lot of vested interests in reducing court delays and maybe Moily may not have been skilled enough to negotiate those or he was just caught up in Congress politics. It will be interesting to see whether Khursheed can do better - he certainly has a good reputation but the job is tough.
On foreign firms, I assume that it was not politically expedient to Moily, nor the Congress leadership for that matter, to open that can of worms at the moment. We will try to find out if Khursheed will have a different approach, although privately I would be surprised if he rocked the boat on that front so early into his term when there are other things to do and statements to make which will win them an election.
Allowing foreign law firms in is unlikely to win many voters amongst aam admi.
Please share your views, would be interested...
Best
Kian
"Under Moily, the law ministry had gone to the dogs. "
http://in.news.yahoo.com/salman-ray-hope-gopal-000000923.html
You act with bfull faith in God. You will be successful.
Apologies for any inconvenience, please do post it again, will be happy to air your views, as usual.
Best regards
Kian