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NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is expected Wednesday to shuffle his under-fire government that is battling multiple corruption scandals and public anger over rising food prices.
Singh will reveal changes to his 73-member council of ministers at 05:00 pm local time, his office said.
Local news reports gave contrasting accounts of the changes he was likely to make, with some forecasting major upheaval while others said only junior roles would be changed with no significant new faces.
Singh, highly respected among his international peers, is battling to save his image at home as “Mr Clean” after presiding over a government whose second term since 2009 has been dominated by corruption scandals.
The ruling Congress party has been on the backfoot for months after the graft-tainted Delhi Commonwealth Games in October and the emergence of details over the sale of 2G telecom licences for a fraction of their value.
The right-wing opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has kept up a sustained attack on the government, with public anger over food price inflation of nearly 20 percent giving them further ammunition.
“I don’t see any major changes,” said B.G. Verghese, a political analyst at New Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University, ahead of Singh’s announcement.
“The government has been slow in tackling corruption and inflation. It will take time to tackle these issues.”
On Tuesday, 14 prominent Indians, including business leaders, judges and economists, warned in an open letter to the government that rampant corruption was damaging the country’s social fabric.
They expressed concern that India’s rapid growth was being derailed by corruption, which they called “the biggest issue corroding the fabric of our nation” and one that needed to be tackled “on a war footing”.
