Applications for the LAMP Fellowship 2025-26 will open on December 1, 2024. Sign up here to be notified when applications open.
In India, one of the common threads that run through many of the corruption scandals is the issue of conflict of interest i.e. public officials taking policy decisions based on their personal interest. For example, Shashi Tharoor in the IPL controversy or Ashok Chavan in the Adarsh Housing Society scam. Many countries take measures to minimize conflict of interest of its MPs by regulating membership of parliamentarians in Committees, making it mandatory for them to declare pecuniary interest, and restricting employment both during and after completion of tenure. For example, the US Senate has a detailed Code of Official Conduct that provides guidelines on conflict of interest. India also has some measures in place to minimize conflict of interest. These are codified in the Code of Conduct for Ministers, Code of Conduct for Members of the Rajya Sabha, Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha and Handbook for Members of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. Every Rajya Sabha MP has to declare his or her interest (along with assets and liabilities). He has to declare five pecuniary interests: remunerative directorship, remunerated activity, majority shareholding, paid consultancy and professional engagement. Lok Sabha MPs can object to another MP joining a parliamentary committee on grounds that he has personal, pecuniary or direct interest. (For more details, see PRS note on Conflict of Interest Issues in Parliament). On December 1, 2010, PRS held its annual Conference on Effective Legislatures. One of the topics discussed was MPs and Conflict of Interest: Issues and Resolution. Panelists included D Raja, Prakash Javdekar and Supriya Sule. Issues such as requirement for transparency, expertise of legislators, election of honest legislators, and ethical media were discussed. The issues that were raised during the discussion are summarised in the PRS Summary of Proceedings from the Conference.
Source: www.pib.nic.in
Yesterday the Prime Minister reshuffled his Cabinet and inducted four cabinet ministers and four ministers of state. Since the beginning of the UPA II government, there have been three major Cabinet reshuffles and a number of minor readjustments in the portfolios of ministers. Analysing changes in the portfolios of ministers gives an insight into the churn in the political leadership of the different ministries of the government of India. Until recently there was no central online resource where information could be collated about cabinet reshuffles. The information was scattered between the websites of the President, the Prime Minister and the Press Information Bureau. Since 2012, the Cabinet Secretariat has started putting details about changes in the portfolio of the council of ministers in the public domain. However analysing this information becomes difficult as the information is split into different files and details about the Cabinet reshuffle do not go back till 2009. We have tried to collate data about changes in Cabinet portfolios since May 2009, so that it becomes easily accessible and can be analysed by interested individuals. The raw data file can be accessed here. This data could be analysed to see which Ministers have shifted across ministries or the average length of tenure of Ministers in different ministries. If you spot interesting trends in the raw data above, please share them with us on twitter@prslegislative We have done a preliminary analysis of the data to see which ministries have had the most changes in Cabinet Ministers since May 2009: - Railway Ministry portfolio has been held by six different Cabinet Ministers [Mamata Banerjee, Dinesh Trivedi, Mukul Roy, C P Joshi (twice), Pawan Kumar Bansal and now Mallikarjun Kharge] - Ministry of Law and Justice, Corporate Affairs and Science and Technology: Four Cabinet Ministers. - Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Civil Aviation, Rural Development, Tourism and Youth and Sports: Three Cabinet Ministers. - Ministries like Finance, Home, External Affairs, Communications and Information Technology, Human Resource Development: Two Cabinet Ministers. - Ministries like Agriculture and Non Conventional Energy Sources have the same Ministers from May 2009. This data also helped us put together a brief chronology of Cabinet reshuffles since the beginning of the term of the UPA II government:
| 23 & 28- May-09 | Cabinet sworn in. |
| 31-May-09 | Meria Kumar resigns as Minister of Water Resources to become Speaker of Lok Sabha. |
| 19-Apr-10 | Shashi Tharoor resigns as Minister of State from the Ministry of External Affairs. |
| 15-Nov-10 | A Raja resigns as Minister of Communications and Information Technology. Kapil Sibal gets additional charge of the ministry. |
| 19-Jan-11 | First major cabinet reshuffle. Most ministries affected. |
| 12-Jul-11 | Second major Cabinet reshuffle. Dinesh Trivedi assumes charge of Railway Ministry after Mamata Banerjee, Salman Khursheed becomes Law Minister, Jairam Ramesh moves to Rural Development. New Ministers like Rajeev Shukla (Parliamentary Affairs) and Jayanthi Natarajan (Environment and Forest) get inducted. |
| 18-Dec-11 | RLD joins UPA. Ajit Singh inducted as Minister of Civil Aviation. |
| 20-Mar-12 | Dinesh Trivedi resigns and Mukul Roy becomes Railway Minister. |
| 27-Jun-12 | Pranab Mukherjee resigns as Finance Minister to fight the presidential election. |
| 31-Jul-12 | P Chidambaram moves from Home to Finance Ministry and Sushil Kumar Shinde moves from Power to Home Ministry. |
| 22-Sep-12 | Trinamool withdraws support to UPA. All TMC ministers resign. C P Joshi assumes additional charge of Railway Ministry. |
| 28-Oct-12 | Third major reshuffle. S M Krishna resigns from Ministry of External Affairs and Salman Khursheed takes over. Ashwani Kumar comes in place of Salman Khursheed in Law and Justice. Ambika Soni resigns and Manish Tiwari takes charge of Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Ajay Maken moves from Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports to Housing and Urban Poverty Alliviation. |
| 21-Mar-13 | DMK withdraws support. All DMK Ministers resign. |
| 11-May-13 | Ashwani Kumar and Pawan Kumar Bansal resign. Kapil Sibal takes charge of Ministry of Law and Justice and C P Joshi takes charge of Railways. |
| 16-Jun-13 | Ajay Maken and C P Joshi resign. |
