Islamabad: During first phase of rightsizing of federal cabinet in Pakistan, twenty ministers are expected to be included as decided by President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani after consulting with coalition partners.
Sources said after a long mutual consultation between the President and the premier, it is agreed to devise new federal cabinet in two phases and to restrict its volume to 20 ministers in the first phase of rightsizing.
Sources said PM is expected to dissolve his cabinet after the cabinet meeting to be held on Wednesday. Currently the cabinet consists of 42 Federal Ministers, 18 State Ministers and 2 advisors. The allied government parties have already asked for two more days for finalizing the name of their ‘would be’ ministers to be included in the new cabinet.
Names of the ministers from Pakistan Peoples’ Party who have succeeded to be part of the new federal cabinet in first phase include Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, Shah Mehmud Qureshi, Rehman Malik, Qamar Zaman Kaira, Raja Pervez Ashraf, Nazar Muhammad Gondal, Hafeez Sheikh, Dr. Babar Awan, Naveed Qamar, Syed Khursheed Shah and Hina Rabbani Khar. One or two ministers from the coalition partners would be taken in the first phase, sources said adding that more portfolios are expected to be given to coalition parties in second phase.
Gilani has already requested to its coalition parties to finalize the names of their representatives as soon as possible so to complete the process of rightsizing the cabinet.
One of the federal ministers said that upcoming cabinet meeting would be the last meeting of current cabinet after which the PM would announce its suspension. He further said that Gilani has kept the federal ministers unaware about the formulation of new cabinet; however, PPP’s Core Committee had already given the right to PM to dissolve the cabinet.
The minister said that inclusion of any minister from Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam is less likely.
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